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”.