Nasi Lemak

Food of:
Malaysia & Singapore

Food submitted by:
foodyoo/Johor/Malaysia

Nasi Lemak cooked in coconut milk, with pandan leaves and even ginger or a stalk of lemon grass. Traditionally, it’s comes as a platter with cucumber slices, small dried anchovies (ikan bilis), roasted peanuts, hard boiled egg, and hot spicy sauce (sambal). Nasi lemak can also come with any other accompaniments such as chicken, cuttlefish, cockle, beef curry.

Nasi lemak traditionally is a breakfast dish, sold early in the morning at roadside stalls in Malaysia, where it is often sold packed in newspaper, brown paper or banana leaf. But nowadays, it's eaten any time. You can have Nasi Lemak during breakfast, lunch, dinner...... Any time of the day!

Recipe

• 1 cup rice
• 3 screwpine (or pandan) leaves
• salt to taste
• 1 grated coconut

• 1 small onion
• 1/2 cup dried ikan bilis ( anchovies )
• 1 clove garlic
• 2 tbsps tamarind juice
• 4 shallots
• 8 dried chillies
• Prawn paste ( belacan) ( Optional )
• Salt and sugar to taste

Clean the rice and drain. Squeeze out 2 cups of thick coconut milk with screwpine leaves. Add in salt. If you desire, you can also add in some sliced shallots and ginger. Serve this rice with sliced hard-boiled eggs, cucumber and sambal ikan bilis.

Fry the ikan bilis until crisp and put aside. Grind the prawn paste together with shallots, garlic, deseeded dried chillies. Slice the small onion into rings. Heat 2 tbsps oil in a pan and fry the ground ingredients until fragrant. Add in the onion rings. Add tamatind juice, salt, sugar. Cook, stirring occasionally until the gravy thickens. Add in the ikan bilis and mix well. Serve with steaming hot Nasi Lemak.