Nasi Lemak

I tend to cook nasi lemak a lot this year. I cooked it for most of the guests we invited over for lunch, alongside another dish- tauhu goreng. I think i need to change the menu, it's getting boring. However, this is an alltime favourtie dish. You can eat it for breakfast, or lunch or dinner, even supper! Yup! You westerners might be thinking we Asians are crazy eating this for breakfast but we Asians think that you westerners are crazy not to eat such things for breakfast. So there we have it.

It seems like a lot of ingredients and a lot of work, but sersiously, it is not that bad. You can make a lot of sambal and keep for next weekend and let the rice cooker worry about cooking the rice.

For the rice
2 cup rice (rinse thoroughly)
1 can coconul milk (about 400-500ml)
1-2 pandan leave, knotted
½ tsp salt

Sambal prawn
10-12 tiger prawns (washed and deveined)
1 big onion (sliced thinly into rings)
2 tbsp cooking oil

to pound/grind into a paste
2 dry chilli
2 red chillies, fresh
1 small piece of belacan (pungent prawn paste)
1 small thumb of galangal (blue ginger)
1-2 candlenuts (substitute with almond nuts)

½ tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
2 tbsp tamarind juice


Garnish
2 hard boil egg, halved or fried eggs
4 tbsp ikan bilis (or dried anchovies), deep fried for 1 minute
½ cucumber, sliced thinly
Optional garnishes
kangkung (water spinach) blanched in boiling water
hard tofu (fried and sliced)
2-4 pics whole makarel fish - deepfried
Fried chicken pieces


Method
Put the rinsed rice into a rice cooker. Pour in the coconut milk, salt and knotted pandan leaves. Make sure that when you put your finger on top of the rice, the liquid should reach the 1st line of your finger (or lowest line from the tip of the finger), if there's too little liquid, you may add more water.
After the rice is cooked, make sure you switch off the rice cooker immediately, to avoid burning the rice, and let it cook gently in its own heat. After 5-10 minutes, lift the lid and fluff the rice.

Meanwhile, while the rice is cooking, prepare the sambal and the garnishes.

For the sambal, heat up the cooking oil, and fry the big onion until soft and brown. Add in the pounded paste ingredients and saute gently until fragrant. Add in the tiger prawns and fry for additional 2-3 minutes. Add in the sugar, salt and tamarind juice. Cook it for another 5 minutes more under medium low heat. Then dish it into a serving bowl/dish.

Serve the rice with all the garnishes and the prawn sambal.