The nasi lemak brunch....

It’s that time of the year again. Its Christmas time and I get to play dress up and attend my wife’s departmental Christmas party. Since I don’t work, I spend most of my time in jeans and t-shirts (and thermals and sweaters in the winter), so I don’t get the chance to dress up very often. Over the weekend, we went to the Malaysian Association of the Netherlands Annual Gala Dinner and we decided to dress up for that. This is us before the event:

Before the Gala Dinner... we looked goooood

Besides that, I’m stuck for ideas. I've spent the whole morning just hanging out at my favorite watering hole, the Coffee Company at Korteporten in Den Haag, and followed that up with walking around aimlessly for another hour or so. Then I came home and spent the last 2 hours reading comments on articles posted on a website dedicated to Liverpool Football Club (I read the articles in 15 minutes). Now I’m just waiting for the time to get ready and head off the Louwman Museum for the Christmas party.

Since I’m not doing anything else, I thought I might as well write about the events over the past weekend, particularly Sunday when we had our nasi lemak brunch. As I mentioned in the last post, I left the invitation open, anyone who wanted to attend would just have to read the post and let me know that they were coming. You’d think with that type of invitation, I’d probably have to cook for 100 people. But not here in Den Haag, I had a guest list of 5 and a half and even then, at the last minute, someone couldn't make it.

So I was left with Fazrin, Merlyna, Siti and Shaukatt being the 4 and little Khaleef making up the half. Brunch was scheduled to start at 11.00 and at 8.30 that morning, my wife got a message from Siti telling us that she was already hungry and couldn't wait to come over. I hadn't even started cooking yet.

The guests. From top to bottom: Fazrin & Merlyna, Siti  & Shaukatt, and Khaleef

 It usually takes me about an hour to cook nasi lemak, but this time I had to allocate a bit more time because I was planning to serve fried chicken with the nasi lemak. I started cooking at 9.30 and by 10.30 I was done with the nasi lemak. At 11.00, Siti, Shaukatt and Khaleef arrived.  I was only half way through cooking the chicken so I could feel the daggers coming from Siti as she was probably expecting to eat immediately upon arrival.

In a way, I was feeling a bit under pressure. This would be the first time I was going to cook nasi lemak for friends since I started writing this blog. I knew expectations were going to be high. As we sat down to eat, I grew more anxious and nervous. What if it turned out to be a disaster?

After my first bite, my fears quickly disappeared. It was exactly how I liked my nasi lemak. The rice was perfectly cooked, not too creamy or heavy and the sambal had the right balance of hot, sweet, sour and salty. Everything tasted right. I got confirmation of that when Siti asked if she could take some of the sambal home if we had extra.

The fried chicken on the left and the sambal on the right

But what really brought a smile to my face was that we almost finished the rice. As a general rule, for the 2 of us, I normally cook about 1 cup of rice. If I’m feeling really hungry, about a cup and a quarter and even then we’re usually stuffed by the time we finish it. If I base my calculation on that rule, 4 cups of rice should have been enough for all of us. I added one extra cup just in case anyone was extra hungry. But then, when I poured the rice into the cooker, there wasn't much left in the bag, so I poured the whole thing in. In total, I cooked about 6 and a half cups. THAT WAS A LOT!!!!

Anyway, all in all, it was a success. I spent the rest of the day with Fazrin and Shaukatt watching football while my wife, Siti and Merlyna went shopping. They left Khaleef with us but being the nice boy that he is, he didn't create too much of a fuss and we managed to enjoy the games on the telly.