Penang Nyonya Nasi Lemak

I was back in Penang for the Chinese New Year 2014, and as usual, I ask my mum to buy me a tub of Sambal Belacan for me to bring back to Singapore with me.Well last week I cooked Kiam Chye Boey to eat it with the sambal, and I was hooked and planned out the next few week's meal plan to go with the sambal. So this week, I made Nasi Lemak Penang Nyonya style. It's amazing what a little sambal can inspire you to cook! Basically you could say that this meal was powered by Sambal Belacan :)

  

I headed to the market at 8:45am to get my materials. It was a lazy Sunday morning, so I didn't bother to hurry myself, making it back only by 930am. Above are the key ingredient required for the dish. I prepared and cook everything from 9:30am till 1215pm. So it's kinda labor intensive I guess. But I didn't care, cause cooking it's kinda therapeutic for me. And in the kitchen, I play classical music to accompany me. So this morning Andrea Bocelli sang while I cook away :)

Cooking Instructions:

Nasi Lemak: 2 cup rice, a few pandan leave tie into a knot and slightly shredded. Throw everything into the rice cooker, add santan (coconut milk) and water up to the level you would normally cook rice with. On the rice cooker. 10 minutes before it finish cooking, stir the rice up to ensure all the coconut milk is mixed in well with the rice. Cook time around 20 to 30 minutes. It actually smell much better when we heat it up again for dinner.

Assam Prawns: Half kg of prawns (SGD8), cleaned and marinate for an hour with assam paste (tamarind paste). Stir fry with a little oil. When the prawn is about done, add some sprinkle of sugar so that it will turn black as the sugar caramelized. The tricky part to this is to get the prawn and the assam to fuse and burn together until it's thick and black. Cook time 20 minutes.

Fried Fish: 8 Ikan Kunign (SGD3), cleaned and marinated with kunyit(tumeric) and salt for an hour. Fry it up with oil. Cook time 20 minutes. Again, getting it charred enhances the taste! But I'm lazy, so I just fry it so so. I read somewhere that double frying it will make it crunchy as well.

Sambal Ikan Bilis: I cheated on this. Interestingly this is the most labor intensive and unhealthy dish of all. First toast the ikan bilis till it's brown and fragrant. That took me almost 30 minutes on low heat. Next, caramelized 2 onions and some garlic (another 20 minutes of so). Add in like 8 packets of chilli sauce to make a paste. Add in the ikan bilis and you have your short cut to sambal ikan bilis that has no sambal :P

Serve rice with some slice cucumber, and half a hard boil egg.

  

This is the table setting of the meal. The sambal belacan is that tiny dish in the middle of the two plates of rice. Yup, that's how small things inspire a whole table of food! I totally love the taste of the nasi lemak as it's fragrant and heavy with the taste of santa, so to me that's really has the essence of home cook to it. Nostalgic. 

Ref:
Sambal Belacan
Andrea Bocelli