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
-------------------------
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
-----------------
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
--------------------------
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.