At a glance

In the last post, I more or less elaborated on my fascination with this Malaysian meal, so I guess now I should go into more detail as to the essential components of the meal. Bear with me cause this could be quite long.

A lot of my friends place emphasis on the dishes that come with the nasi lemak. They place a high degree of importance on the fried chicken, “paru goreng” (fried cow’s lung) and Chicken “rending” and other dishes that sometimes accompany the meal. I, on the other hand, don’t consider these dishes at all when looking for a good nasi lemak. The most important criteria for a good nasi lemak to me are the rice and the “sambal”.

a)      The rice

The rice is cooked in coconut milk with some ginger, shallots and salt to give it flavoring. The coconut milk gives the rice a wholesome and rich flavor. Besides giving it a bit of a bite, the ginger and shallots also produces a wonderful smell when you open the lid of the rice cooker. For more aromas, most people will add a “pandan” leaf. Personally, the “pandan” leaf is not an essential ingredient.

Over the years, I haven’t really seen much variety when it comes to the rice. I have seen people add in pepper to the rice, but this doesn’t change the taste much. Recently though, I have encountered nasi lemak where the rice is also mixed with dhal beans which besides increases the richness of the rice, also provides some crunchiness as well.

b)      The sambal

This is the most important dish. The basic nasi lemak comes with a sambal of dried anchovies cooked in a chili sauce. To me, this is the dish that makes or breaks the nasi lemak. Even though the sambal has a fiery chili base, it does not have to be very hot. However, to cross the line between average and mouthwateringly delicious, it has to have a perfect balance of sweet, sour and salty.

There have been many variations to the sambal. The basic taste has remained the same, only the contents have changed. I have seen people use prawns, squids, chicken and even eggs as a substitute for the dried anchovies. I prefer to stick to the crunchiness of the dried anchovies, fried prior to mixing it in the sambal. I have on occasions used boiled quail eggs as a substitute.

Besides the rice and the sambal, nasi lemak is served with basic accompaniments. Slices of cucumber (sometimes useful to help reduce the fiery effects of the sambal) boiled eggs (sometimes fried) and fried anchovies (usually the same ones that goes into the sambal set aside as an accompaniment) are the typical ones.

Nowadays, most places will serve nasi lemak with other dishes. In your typical Malaysian kopitiam, you will get a piece of chicken “rendang” together with your meal. Some stalls I know specialize in nasi lemak accompanied with a steaming hot piece of deep fried chicken. Other places will have a variety of dishes which you can have with your nasi lemak. As for me, it doesn’t matter what comes with the nasi lemak, as long as the two basic components of the meal, the rice and the sambal, are delicious, then you better be wearing stretch pants, or make sure your pants don’t fall off when you unbutton your pants.

The Most Unlikely Start

As mentioned before, I don’t know exactly when my fixation with “nasi lemak” began. The most probable time I can think of was when I was in University where I accidentally discovered how to cook it. I guess that doesn’t sound very comforting to those who have never tasted my delicious version of this wonderful meal. I mean, how do you accidentally discover how to cook something?

Well, that time, it was the first time I had to actually fend for myself. I spent most of my teenage years away from my parents in a boarding school. But there you don’t have to cook for yourself. Everything is prepared for you. So prior to going to university, I was literally fed with everything I needed (although there were times I felt like I could do without some of the things they served in boarding school).

Life in university was completely different. I had to learn how to cook for myself and I had to learn quick. How long can you survive on a diet of toast and cereals for almost every meal? So I started off with the simple stuff like fried eggs, baked beans sometimes pancakes and my favorite “cucur ikan bilis”. Sometimes I’d marinate a chicken in whatever sauce I could find and stick it in the microwave. Without any prior experience, I never attempted to cook rice that was until I had to.

So it came as a bit of a surprise when the Malaysian Student Society at my university decided to serve “nasi lemak” and “satay” for one of their functions and since we had a very small number of female Malay students, the boys were given the responsibility to cook the meals. Somehow, I was volunteered to take charge of this endeavor for 300 of my fellow students.

Before this, my cooking experience was very limited. I did have some knowledge of cooking Malay dishes, but all that was only in my head. Theoretically, I knew how to cook “nasi lemak” and “satay. I knew all the ingredients that I had to put in the dish, well most of them anyway. In fact, when I think back about it, I had never tried to cook rice prior to that. In theory, I knew how much water to put into the rice, but I had never actually done it before.

Needless to say, my “nasi lemak” barely passed the test i.e. nobody had food poisoning from wating it. For the 250 or so non-Malaysians (who didn’t know better)  attending the function, it was absolutely delicious. As for my fellow Malaysian who became my first guinea pigs in my experimentation with “nasi lemak”, it was nothing spectacular, it had the look, the taste and the smell, but it wasn’t great.

I have since perfected my technique in cooking “nasi lemak”. Nowadays, I can rustle up a full meal in under an hour. For the last 20 years, I’ve been serving my “nasi lemak” to friends and family without much complaint and I hope my friends and family will continue to enjoy my “nasi lemak”.

The Nasi Lemak Saga Begins

To be honest, I’m not sure when my fixation for “nasi lemak” began. Throughout my childhood, I was always indifferent towards this delicious meal. I grew up in Terengganu, where the lure of “nasi dagang”, a mouthwatering mixture of rice and glutinous rice cooked to perfection in herbs and then mixed with coconut milk, served with a spicy fish gravy,  has always been more overwhelming to the locals compared to “nasi lemak”. Those days, I always preferred the eye popping sweetness of the “pulut cawan” for breakfast, the sweet glutinous rice balls rolled around in salted desiccated coconut, savored with either dried fish or my favorite fish crackers, the “keropok”.

For the uninitiated, “nasi lemak” is originally a breakfast meal (Well that was the case when I was growing up. Nowadays it can be eaten at any time of the day). The rice mixed with some onions and ginger, is cooked in coconut milk. In most cases, it is served with “sambal ikan bilis”, dried anchovies cooked in chilli gravy hot enough to light a fire in your belly and accompanied by the usual condiments such as boiled eggs, some peanuts and sliced cucumber. I suppose this was the original combination. However, in Terengganu, instead of the dried anchovies in our “sambal” we used to have pieces of “ïkan aya” or more commonly known as “ikan tongkol” or tuna fish.

Over the years, my favorite dish has evolved. The choice of condiments has increased and so have the accompaniments. Nowadays you can get virtually anything with your “Nasi Lemak”. You can have it with fried chicken or chicken “rendang”, instead of “sambal ikan bilis”, you can have it with either “sambal udang”, “sambal telur” or even “sambal sotong”. Whatever catches your fancy.

Anyway, this blog is about my experience with “nasi lemak”, starting off with my own home cooked version containing secret ingredients that very few people know about, to the ones cooked by my friends and ones that I eat at the stalls and restaurants. I’m not really looking for the perfect “nasi lemak” as I have this belief that my version is the best. I just want to share my experience of having other people’s version of what I believe to be Malaysia’s favorite dish.