Nasi Lemak

Ingredients

• 400 g jasmine rice
• 1 tin of coconut milk
• 2 pandan leaves, knotted
• 20 g ginger, sliced
• 5 shallots
• 4 garlic cloves
• 8 dried red chillies, soaked
• 2 tsp shrimp paste
• 1 tbsp tamarind paste
• 30 g palm sugar
• 60 g dried anchovies, or 6 tinned anchovy fillets
• 80 g raw peanuts
• 4 eggs
• 1 cucumber, sliced
• 120 ml vegetable oil

Method

1. Rinse the rice

   Rinse until the water runs clear and drain well. Coconut milk is rich enough without the surface starch making it gluey.

2. Cook in coconut milk

   Combine the rice with the coconut milk, 200 ml water, the pandan, ginger and a teaspoon of salt. Bring to a boil, stir once, then cover and cook on the lowest heat for 12 minutes and rest 10 more. Coconut milk catches easily — keep the heat genuinely low.

   22 min

3. Grind the sambal paste

   Blend the soaked chillies, shallots, garlic and shrimp paste into a smooth rempah.

4. Fry the sambal properly

   Fry the paste in the oil over a medium heat for 15 minutes, stirring, until it darkens to deep red-brown and the oil separates out. This long fry is the difference between sambal and chilli sludge, and it cannot be shortened.

   15 min

5. Balance the sambal

   Add the tamarind, palm sugar and a splash of water and cook five minutes more. It should be sweet, sour, salty and hot all at once, and thick enough to hold its shape on a spoon.

   5 min

6. Fry the crunchy bits

   Fry the anchovies and peanuts separately in a little oil until crisp and golden, and fry the eggs hard so the edges are lacy.

7. Assemble the plate

   Mound the rice and arrange the sambal, anchovies, peanuts, egg and cucumber around it in separate piles. Nasi lemak is an assembly, not a mixed dish — the contrast between each element is the whole idea.