Nasi lemak with sambal, egg, cucumber, peanuts and fried anchovies
* This post is part of the Royal Selangor Jellyriffic Competition where ten bloggers from around the world compete by posting recipes each day for 30 days in the month of October 2011 to raise awareness and support for breast cancer. *
UPDATE:
Follow our progress and download our recipes in the “Cuisines of the World” by clicking the image below:
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Nasi lemak or coconut flavoured rice with sambal condiment is woven into the very fabric of Malaysian food culture where millions of Malaysians tuck into countless variations of this dish for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
As a young boy growing up in Malaysia, I fondly remember the nasi lemak stalls around Kuala Lumpur where one can choose from a wonderful combination of sambal, curries and other delectable sides such as fried fish, chicken and rendang.
I have no documented information about its origins but I believe it may be due to the abundance of coconut in many tropical countries around Asia and using coconut as a main cooking ingredient.
In Malaysia, the coconut tree is known to have “seribu guna”, that is, a tree with a thousand uses. Rice and spicy curries are often flavoured with fresh coconut milk while anchovies or ikan bilis are remnants of daily catches along seaside villages where the coconut trees thrive in its fertile soil.
When I first came to Sydney in the early 1980s to attend high school and university, I clearly remember that Asian ingredients were almost non-existent. Fast forward almost thirty years later and Sydney’s Asian grocers are a melting pot of food ingredients from every corner of South East Asia. Malaysian restaurants abound in Sydney and we see executives in office attire putting on bibs before tucking into fiery laksa and other Malaysian delights.
Nasi lemak remains one of my very favourite dishes and many of our Australian friends have also learnt to appreciate this wonderful Malaysian dish with delectable curries through our countless nasi lemak dinner parties at home. Therefore, it is our pleasure to present you with our second main of this competition:
Nasi lemak with sambal, egg, cucumber, peanuts and fried anchovies
Day 5: Main – Nasi lemak with sambal, egg, cucumber, peanuts and fried anchovies
Ingredients 3 cups Jasmine rice Sambal 10 dried chillies, rehydrated Method Sambal 1. Break up belachan into small bits and dry fry on a shallow pan until fragrant. crispy and then set aside. An alternative method is to wrapped the belachan bits in aluminium foil and toasted in oven at 180C for about 20 minutes until it is fragrant and dry. 2. Process rehydrated red chillies into a paste and set aside. 3. Heat sufficient oil in a wok and fry two cups of anchovies until light golden brown. 4. Use oil from frying the anchovies to fry chilli paste and onions until soft and fragrant. 5. Add in toasted sambal and mix well. The sambal should look a fiery red by now from the dried red chillies. 6. Drizzle in tamarind juice and stir in sugar. 7. Add a little salt for tasting if required as the belachan have a very salty taste. Nasi lemak 1. Cook approximately three cups of Jasmine rice using equal proportions of water and coconut milk with the knotted pandanus leaves and two teaspoons of sea salt. 2. When rice is cooked, stir the rice and let it stand for about ten minutes before serving. Serving Serve the nasi lemak with roasted peanuts, anchovies, boiled egg, cucumber and a serve of the onion sambal on the side. Tips for this recipe: 1. Frying or cooking sambal produces a strong pungent aroma. Be sure to warn any pesky or difficult neighbours! 2. Do not over cook the raw sambal or over fry the anchovies as they will have a very bitter taste. 3. This sambal requires a fair amount of oil to sautee the onions. Add more oil if required and skim off the excess red oil after cooking.
2 stalks of pandanus or screwpine leaves
1 cup of roasted peanuts
1 cup of deep fried anchovies
3 lebanese cucumbers, sliced according to your liking
4 free range hen eggs, hard boiled and cut into wedges or sliced
2 large brown onions, sliced thinly
4 – 5 cup vegetable cooking oil
1 – 2 cm knob of belachan (shrimp paste)
5 – 6 tablespoon tamarind juice
4 –5 tablespoon sugar to taste
We hope you will try this recipe because it is definitely one of the most cooked recipes in our home.
Nasi lemak with sambal, egg, cucumber, peanuts and fried anchovies
So dear readers, do you have a favourite dish from your country to share with us?
Nasi lemak with sambal, egg, cucumber, peanuts and fried anchovies
*Note to readers: You can support and help raise the awareness of breast cancer by the following ways:
- Share our recipes with family and friends on Facebook or Twitter.
- Like chopinandmysaucepan on Facebook.
- Follow chopinandmysaucepan on Twitter.
- Suggest to us any recipe, jelly or otherwise that you may like us to cook using the mould. Recipes do not necessarily need to incorporate gelatin and participants are encouraged to be as creative as possible. We need all the help we can get and would welcome any creative ideas and recipes from our readers.
- Purchase a jelly mould from Royal Selangor. Remember, all sales proceeds will go towards improving the lives of women affected by breast cancer.
Win an Olympus VG-110 camera
To encourage readers to support the cause for breast cancer awareness, we will give away an Olympus VG-110 camera to one lucky reader.
All you have to do over the next thirty days is to provide your comments, feedback, suggestions or any recipes and you will be in the running to receive this camera. This prize is open to any and all readers.
If you enjoy our daily posts throughout October 2011, do consider helping the cause for breast cancer by participating in any or all the the ways mentioned above.
We wish you good health and happy cooking!
Chopinand & Mysaucepan
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Nasi lemak satu with teh O ais limau please. Is dinner time here and it is making me hungry. Love the last pix.
I love how you presented the nasi lemak – very creative. Nasi Lemak, one of my favourite Malaysian food.
Very nice again! I love the cucumber and egg slices decoration. And a nice, cooled beer just seems to be the perfect company for this dish.
(Btw: It’s funny that the “Who’s reading life traffic feed” never gets me right. It always thinks I’m either from Ludwigshafen or Eppelheim or Mannheim. All these locations are close by, but just close by. 😉 Tee-hee.)
Wow – this is such a visually appealing dish! I’m now following you on twitter! Thanks for such a great series…
The presentation of the dish is fantastic. I can’t wait to start moulding rice with my jelly mould!
Interesting. I was just reading another post with yellow rice, curry, potatoes served pyramid style and now, nasi lemak! I guess I love spicy food up to the pyramid 😀
foahhhh nasi lemak + beer!! niceee… this dish looks PERFECT! well done! =D
woooo I just had nasi lemak at work today, your presentation is da bomb!
Looks so elegant and delicious
Your nasi lemak is so nicely decorated. The last picture shows it all!
Nasi lemak is my all time favourite! This one looks elegant!
This is another brilliant idea! I could eat the whole plate!
I have to go out and find at least half of these ingredients.
My pantry is very American, it seems.
My favorite regional food is Southern Fried Chicken with stuffed baked potatoes and cornbread. I told you I love carbs!
It’s been my dream to eat Nasi Lemak since I learned about this dish after blogging. This is a fancy version and I love how you decorated the plate. How’s this challenge so far? You’ve been doing REALLY great!
Hi Nami, yes I have read you have been wanting to try it when you go to Singapore. I’m sure you will be able to find it in a Malaysian restaurant in San Francisco. The main thing to this dish is to get the sambal cooked correctly and the rice needs to have a good coconut flavour. The competition has been tough because we need to come up with a recipe everyday but it is fun because we have been pushing ourselves to be creative
Wow that looks so beautiful. Great idea!
Very creative! Well done…Nasi Lemak looks great! I bet it tastes amazing too.
Great job so far with innovation for the Jellyriffic Comp.
You’re too much! I love all these amazing creations. I so want one of these to play with. I’m not sure which one of your creations I love the most. Now to taste each one, that would be the true test. Which one have you liked the best so far?
Hi Vicki,
The mould has really challenged us to think outside the box to come up with some creative ideas. We liked this one because it is comfort food for us but we also enjoyed the flavours of the beetroot jelly and fusilli bolognaise too.
Oooooh ok new fave! Love this one
I love Malaysian cuisine, but have never had Nasi Lemak. I’m sure your creative version will be stolen by some fancy restaurant owners 😉
You are literally killing me here.. OMG! NASI LEMAK is my weakness. Huge 😀 That surely worthy of salivating!
This has got to be the prettiest nasi lemak I have ever seen!
Oh my goodness I seriously need this right now!! Great work. Now please deliver it to me
Heidi xo
love the birds-eye view shot
This is so nicely presented and another really creative entry!