Most Popular Malaysian Food

The most popular Malaysian Food is The Nasi Lemak as the Malaysians of all races loves and eat it usually for breakfast but it is available round the clock in Indian Muslim restaurants. It is a Malay food sold everywhere in Malaysia, on side street vendors, in coffee shops, in the wet markets, at gas stations and even at 5-star hotels' restaurants.
Take-away ones are wrapped in a cone-shaped waxed paper lined with a piece of banana leaf and in posh restaurant, on a dinner plate laden with rice cooked with coconut milk, a meat 'rendang' which is a Malay curry of either chicken or beef, a 'sambal' which is a condiment cooked with prawn paste, grounded chilli and onions with a slight tangy taste of tamarind juice, some slices of cucumber and some deep-fried dried anchovies and groundnuts and wedge of hard-boiled egg. Sounds heavy for breakfast? Yes, it is heavy! But you can have it less heavy minus the meat 'rendang'.
Here is the recipe which is divided into 3 main sections:
(1) The coconut rice
(2) The Beef Rendang and (3) The Sambal

The Coconut Rice
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The traditional method would steam the rice. But an automatic rice cooker works just as well with a little alteration in the method.
400 g long grain rice or fragrant rice
250ml pkt coconut milk
750ml water
5 screwpine leaves, washed and knotted
1 tspn salt

Method:
1 Wash rice in rice cooker with a few changes of water.
2 Add 100ml of coconut into rice, water, screwpine leaves and salt into rice and put to boil.
3 When the rice cooker has switched off, the rice is cooked. Stir in the remaining coconut milk and fluff up rice with a pair of chopsticks. Leave to stand for another 10 minutes before serving.

The Sambal
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4 shallots
30 g shrimp paste
4 tbsp cooking oil
3 tbsp chilli paste*
1 tbsp tamarind pulp mixed with 65 ml water and strained
1 medium spanish onion, sliced
4 tbsp sugar
salt to taste

Method:
1 In a mortar and pestle, pound onions until fine and mash in shrimp paste. Alternatively, grind everything them in a food processor.
2 Heat oil in a wok until hot. Add in onion and chilli paste and stir-fry until fragrant.
3 Add in tamarind juice and bring to boil. Simmer gently under low heat for a minute.
4 Add in sugar and salt to taste.
5 Texture should not be too thick. The sambal will thicken when cooled to room temperature. It should be a thick gravy and not runny.
*To make chilli paste from scratched, take about 100 g of dried chillies. Remove seeds and snip into 1 cm lengths with a pair of kitchen scissors and soak in cold water over-night. Drain off water and process until smooth. Heat oil in a wok and fry chilli paste with a teaspoon of salt until oil separates. Store in an airtight container in the fridge. Should keep for about a month.

The Beef Rendang
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There are many versions of beef rendang depending from which State of the Country. This one is my favourite and many of the people I know loves this version too. It is easy to cook as it everything is dumped into the wok and stir-fry until dry and the coconut milk turns to oil, giving it a glossy look and the sugar caramelised. Its is the finishing touch which is the key. Hmmm...yummy!
You can vary the degree of spiciness by varying the amount of chilli paste. Here it is of medium hotness.

3 tbsp cooking oil
2-3 tbsp chilli paste(*see note above)
4 medium Spanish onion
1 whole garlic bulb
4 cm galangale
4 cm old ginger
3 pkts x 250ml coconut milk
1 kg beef tenderloin, sliced
2 tsp salt
25 g palm sugar, chopped or brown sugar
1 turmeric leaf (centre rib removed and finely sliced leaves)

Method:
1 In a food processor, grind onions, garlic, galangale and ginger.
2 Heat oil in a wok and fry grounded ingredients and chilli paste until oil separates.
3 Add in beef, coconut milk and salt and stir-fry until quite dry and coconut milk has turned to oil. At this point, be careful that mixture do not get burnt.
4 Stir in sugar and turn heat down to low. Continue stirring until rendang turns glossy.
5 Lastly, stir in sliced turmeric leaf. Dish out and serve.

Welcome To Malaysia

Welcome to this blogspot of about Malaysian Gourmet!
Malaysia is in South East Asia and consists of Peninsula Malaysia just below Thailand and the other part at the island of Borneo. Although Malaysia is a muslim nation, the people here are very much multi racial with 60% Malays and the remaining 40% consisting of Chinese, Indians and the local ethnic races. Our food, therefore, has all the influences of these races, plus, historical influences from the English (being under the British Protectorate until independence in 1957), the Spanish and the Dutch because of the spice islands.
The beautiful part of our country is that everyone is able to live in peace and harmony and respecting each other's culture and religion and so it will be a surprise to many tourists that the country's list of public holidays is one of the longest in the world because we observe Christmas (for the Christians), Deepavali (for the Hindus), Hari Raya Puasa (the Muslims), Chinese New Year (for the Chinese), Wesak Day (for the Buddhists), Harvest Festival (for the Ethnic races) plus other public holidays (Labour Day, King's birthday etc), just to mention a few.
Oh, not forgetting to mention that we have 9 Sultans who each 'rule' over 9 of the 13States and they take turns to be King of the country every 5 years.
In this blog, I will share with you the cuisine of Malaysia, some classic ones, some fusion.
So stick around!