Nasi Lemak

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Due to the terrible summer of 2024, up until half of July at least, I was dreaming of Asian night markets and I stumbled upon an old video of Anthony Bourdain on Penang Island, Malaysia. While the bad weather almost warrants a premature suicide, I opted for making nasi lemak (rice coconut) instead. It is a simple dish but the individual elements are time consuming. I started with the sambal. It’s a sambal made from dried chillies.

Blend the following ingredients to a fine paste:

  • 50g dried red chillies, almost any type will do, but soak them in water before blending.

  • 50g or 1 large red onion

  • 30g or 5 cloves garlic

  • 30g or 1 tbsp ginger

  • 2 stalks lemongrass, inner core.

  • 20g or 1 tbsp belachan or trassi, toasted

  • 2 tbsps of fried ikan bilis (dried anchovies), fried

  • 1/4 cup oil to blend.

You also need to prepare the following: 1 tbsp tamarind paste, 50 gram palm sugar, a bit of salt. Mix with 3 tablespoons water.

Fry the paste on a low heat until the oil separates from the paste. This is called “pecah minyak”. Then add the tamarind mixture and taste if it needs adjustment in saltiness or sweetness.

While you can keep nasi lemak very simple, just serving sambal, tiny fried fish (you buy these salted; either fry them in hot oil straight from the package or wash them to get rid of most of the salt) and peanuts, boiled egg and cucumber, you can also serve this dish with a piece of chicken.

Chicken

It is important to cut the chicken in rather small pieces. Use chicken including the bone, just forget about chicken breast. Fry the chicken pieces in oil until the skin is nicely browned. Set the chicken aside.

Prepare a spice mixture of:

1 tsp coriander seeds, whole
2 tsp cumin seeds, whole
1 cinnamon stick
2 cloves
Lime leaves.

Prepare the following ingredients:

One chopped onion
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
3 slices chopped ginger, finely chopped
2 Birdseye chillies, finely chopped
2 tomatoes chopped.
Lemongrass
Trassi/belachan
1 tsp chilli powder
1 tsp turmeric
Coconut milk

Method

Add the spice mixture in the hot oil you used for frying the chicken., cook for a couple of minutes.

Add the chopped onions and brown the onion for 5 minutes. Add the garlic, ginger, chilli, chilli powder and turmeric powder and mix while stirring.

Add the chopped tomatoes, salt and if needed a little water. Stir until you have a sauce. Add trassi and the lemon grass.

Pour in the coconut milk and bring to a boil. Add the chicken pieces and simmer until the chicken is tender. Add water if needed, or chicken stock.