Nasi Lemak
Malaysia’s national breakfast: pandan coconut rice with sambal, crispy anchovies, peanuts, egg and cucumber. Small parts, perfect plate.
- prep
- 25 min
- cook
- 40 min
- total
- 1 h 5 min
- serves
- 4
- level
- medium
Nasi lemak means rich rice, and the richness is coconut milk and pandan steaming into the pot together. Around that rice gathers a fixed cast: dark sweet sambal, fried anchovies, roasted peanuts, boiled egg, cooling cucumber.
It is breakfast in Malaysia, wrapped in banana leaf at roadside stalls, and dinner anywhere honesty prevails. The sambal is where cooks are judged.
Nasi Lemak is one of the world's classic dishes from 67 countries.
method
Cook the rice with the coconut milk, enough water for your usual ratio, the knotted pandan, ginger and a pinch of salt. Rest it 10 minutes off the heat.
Blend the soaked chilies, shallots, garlic and belacan to a paste.
Fry the paste in 4 tablespoons of oil over medium heat, stirring, for 10 minutes until darkened and the oil separates. Add the sliced onion, tamarind, sugar and salt and cook 5 more minutes into a sweet-hot jammy sambal.
Fry the anchovies in hot oil until golden and crisp; drain.
Plate: a mound of coconut rice, a spoon of sambal, anchovies, peanuts, egg halves and cucumber arranged around it.
chef's tips
- Pandan is the fragrance that makes it nasi lemak; frozen leaves work perfectly.
- Fry the sambal paste until the oil splits; wet sambal is unfinished sambal.
- Every component except the rice keeps for days, so the second breakfast takes ten minutes.