My aunt made this really cute and insta-worthy dish for Mother's Day today (I'll write about the occasion in my next post). It's a savoury "nasi lemak cake".
Nasi lemak literally means "fat rice" in Malay. It's actually a fragrant rice dish cooked using coconut milk and panda leaf.
This is how the dish looks like traditionally and rather typically:
(Image source: https://snapguide.com/guides/cook-coconut-milk-rice-nasi-lemak/)
I just realised Wikipedia has a detailed page explaining the different variations of the dish found in different places of Southeast Asia.
Born in Malaysia and raised in Singapore, the nasi lemak that I'm familiar with comes with cucumber slices, sunny side up or hard boiled egg, ikan bilis (anchovies) and peanuts, and fried chicken drumstick or fried fish.
I'm not a fan of spicy food or chillies, but I must say, nasi lemak is not completed without a few spoonfuls of sambal chilli by the side.
(Image source:
https://snapguide.com/guides/make-sambal-chili-paste/)
Sambal chilli is basically made of shrimp paste and other ingredients. It has a rather unique and distinctive sweet-spicy taste, which I'm really fond of.
So yup, this is a dish that I would always recommend to my foreigner friends whenever they visit Singapore or Malaysia.
The rice is so fragrant with the coconut flavour, you'll surely love it.