Nasi lemak

Ingredients

• Jasmine rice500 g
• Coconut milk400 ml
• Pandan leaves2
• Ginger30 g
• Dried chillies15
• Shallots8
• Garlic5 clove
• Belacan shrimp paste2 tsp
• Tamarind paste2 tbsp
• Palm sugar2 tbsp
• Dried anchovies100 g
• Peanuts100 g
• Eggs5
• Cucumber1
• Vegetable oil150 ml
• Saltto taste

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Rinse the rice until the water runs clear and cover it with coconut milk let down with water, salt and pandan.

   15 min

2. 2

   Add slices of ginger and cook covered for fifteen minutes, then let it stand ten.

   27 min

3. 3

   Soak the dried chillies in boiling water for twenty minutes and blend them with the shallot, garlic and belacan.

   25 min

4. 4

   Fry the paste in oil for twenty minutes over medium heat, until oil breaks out at the edges.

   22 min

5. 5

   Add the tamarind, palm sugar and salt and cook the sambal ten minutes more to thicken it.

   12 min

6. 6

   Fry the anchovies and peanuts separately until crisp and hard-boil the eggs.

   18 min

7. 7

   Build the plate: a mound of rice, a spoon of sambal, anchovies, peanuts, half an egg and cucumber slices.

   8 min

About the dish

The rice is cooked in coconut milk with salt and a pandan leaf rather than water. That makes it rich and aromatic, and lemak means exactly "rich" in Malay.

Sambal tumis is made separately and slowly: a chilli paste with belacan shrimp paste, reduced until oil breaks out at the edges. Before that point the flavour stays raw.

Nasi lemak is breakfast, sold in Malaysia from six in the morning, wrapped in banana leaf. The restaurant version with fried chicken came later.

Worth knowing

• — Let the coconut milk down with water roughly half and half. Neat, it gives rice too rich to stay separate and it clumps.
• — Make the sambal in quantity and keep it a week in the fridge. It goes with other dishes too, and it takes longer than everything else put together.
• — Fry the anchovies until fully crisp. Underdone they stay soft and salty and the whole textural contrast is lost.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

720 kcal

Protein

26 g

Fat

34 g

Carbs

82 g

More from Malaysia

• Laksa lemak — Noodles in a coconut broth built on a rempah paste, with prawns and tofu. The paste is fried until the oil separates.
• Roti canai — A flatbread stretched translucent and crumpled before frying. The layers come from air rather than butter.
• Char kway teow — Wide rice noodles seared over a very high flame with prawns, egg and bean sprouts.