Here’s a wonderful, different way to cook rice. Add coconut milk to make Nasi Lemak. The whole meal looks so simple, and the rice looks like regular rice but this is surprisingly tasty. This dinner can be done in 30 minutes.
One of my favorite breakfast–yes, breakfast–Nasi Lemak is simply rice cooked in coconut milk served with fried egg, cucumber and its signature sambal belachan, a chilli paste. It’s a typical Malay breakfast.
Back in my young, wild days when a few of us rode motorcycles up the east coast of Malaysia, we were too cheap to pay for hotels so we slept on the beaches nearby Kuantan. We had been hoping to watch the migrating giant turtles lay eggs and got to meet Malay fishing villagers. They told us their wives would wake up at dawn to cook Nasi Lemak so they’d have a hearty breakfast before or after night fishing.
Traditionally Nasi Lemak is served with fried fish and comes wrapped in banana leaf and newspaper. Hey, Fish and Chips came in newspaper too. Today, it’s still sold wrapped in banana leaf. I didn’t have fish in my fridge and so I simply fried some scrambled eggs, which is also how Nasi Lemak can be served.
Egg and cucumber and rice? Sounds like a boring combination. Ah…it’s all in the rice, fragrant and flavor infused with coconut milk combined with the sambal chili cooked with onion and belachan, a fermented shrimp paste. Not too spicy this sauce is sweet with the robust, strong flavor of the shrimp paste.
When eating Nasi Lemak you mix the chili into the rice until the rice is bright red. Add a little egg, a little cucumber and some peanuts in one spoonful and it’s a wonderful combination of different tastes in the mouth. When Ted saw me eat this red rice the first time he asked how I could eat anything so spicy in the morning. It’s comfort food.
I can make Sambal Belachan (later post) but why bother when you can buy really good bottled Sambal Belachan in Chinese supermarkets. This means that all you need to do is cook the rice, fry an egg, cut some cucumber and spoon out some sambal from the bottle! And there you have a hearty meal in as short a time as it takes to cook rice. Click here for more on Sambal Belachan and where to get it in the DC area.
You can make a Nasi Lemak dinner more elaborate by adding other dishes. See BANQUET IDEAS at end of this post.
Nasi Lemak
Serves 4
Preparation time: 5 minutes
Cooking time: 30 minutes
2 cups rice
½ cup coconut milk
2 teaspoons salt
Water
4 eggs, beaten
1/8 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons oil
1 small cucumber, sliced
Roasted peanuts
Sambal Belachan
Cooking the rice:
If using a rice cooker, wash rice in rice cooker pot, and when water is clear, add coconut milk, salt and enough water so that depth of water is about ¾ inch above the rice. Give rice a stir to blend coconut milk with salt. Test the taste of the water for saltiness, adding more salt if necessary. Set rice cooker pot in rice cooker and press cook.
For instructions on how to wash rice, click here. For instructions on how to cook rice in a regular pot on stove top, click here.
Preparing other ingredients:
Heat a pan. Add oil and heat until shimmering. Add egg and fry until egg is cooked. Set aside. When rice is cooked, serve with egg, cucumber, peanuts and sambal belachan.
BANQUET IDEAS
You can serve a banquet version of Nasi Lemak by adding other dishes. Here are a few suggestions.
—Broiled Salmon. For recipe, click here.
—Turmeric Chicken, Ayam Kunyit
