Saturday, July 25, 2009

Nasi Lemek



Nasi lemak is the national dish of Malaysia.In Malay Nasi Lemek means 'rice in cream'.Traditionally, this comes as a platter of food wrapped in banana leaf, with cucumber slices, salted dried anchovies, roasted peanuts, hard boiled egg, and hot spicy sauce at its core.

Reminds me of our Pothi choru .Here is my version with ingredients that I had on hand.

Ingredients for rice:
  1. Basmati rice - 1 cup washed and drained.
  2. Coconut Milk - 2 cups.
  3. 1 piece of ginger and a bay leaf.
  4. salt to taste
Cook the rice in coconut milk adding the ginger piece and bay leaf and salt.

For the Prawn sambal:
  1. cleaned prawns - 2 cups.
  2. Onion - 1 big.
  3. Tomatoes - 2 medium.
  4. ginger and garlic chopped - 1tsp.
  5. Powdered dry shrimp - 1 tsp(optional).
  6. soy sauce - 4 tsp.
  7. Chilly sauce - depending on how spicy you want the dish to be(you could use chilly powder instead).
Saute the chopped onion,ginger/garlic,tomatoes in oil.
add in the powdered dry shrimp and the soy sauce and chilly sauce and the shrimp and cook until done.It should be on the drier side with not a lot of gravy.

2 comments:

  1. try using chilly paste instead of chilly sauce.
    you have to grind candlenut together with the chillies.
    You also have to add tamarind and turmeric to the mixture.
    And you can leave out the soy sauce. it spoils the taste actually.
    another must have for nasi lemak is dried fried anchovies and hard boiled egg. (the five must haves in a nasi lemak is coconut milk rice, sambal, peanuts, cucumber and egg)on banana leave of course.
    One more thing...you must add screwpine leaves to the rice for aroma..its distinctive..happy cooking..

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  2. Thanks Veera :) Ill try and get the ingredients .

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