I tasted an incredibly good chicken dish for the first time in Antsirabe, way up in the mountains some 2 hours from Antananarivo, the capital of Madagascar. It's a town known for its health spas and grandiose architecture. It's so good, I had to know the recipe. It's so simple, I want to share it with you.

Ingredients:

1 Old stewing hen
1 hand of ginger (the whole ginger root looks to me like a hand and weighs about 1 to 1 1/2 lbs)
salt
pepper
rice

Directions:

Put the stewing hen in a large pot. Peel and thinly slice the ginger and add all of it to the pot. Cover with water, salt, and pepper to taste. Bring to a boil. Lower the flame and simmer for 3 hours or until the chicken is tender.

Remove the chicken and serve the chicken with boiled rice, and the cooking water as a soup. Sprinkle some cilantro over the soup.