Homecooked Nasi Lemak

So I got up one morning and felt like cooking nasi lemak (Coconut milk rice) for the first time. Always wanted to try but just the thought of having to go to the market to buy these ingredients got me lazy. It's actually quite easy to make, but there are actually quite a lot of things you need to buy, if you're making everything from scratch.

That evening, I invited my cousins over to try my first-time nasi lemak. I actually also made some "Ayam Masak Merah" but it was odd-tasting according to them. So I shall not include the recipe here, yah? :D Haven't mastered that dish yet. However, the coconut milk rice and the kunyit fried chicken was good according to them. The sambal sotong was easy because I got the ready packed sambal from the market, I only had to add a little salt, big onions and sliced squid (sotong) and stir fry till fragrant. As for the peanuts and anchovies, I did not get the ready fried ones, I got them uncooked and fried them myself. Much fresher that way.

Nasi Lemak

Ingredients
1. Rice
2. Fresh Coconut Milk (Santan)
3. Pandan Leaves (Knotted)
4. Salt
5. Ginger
6. Shallots
7. Peanuts
8. Anchovies (Ikan Bilis)
9. Cucumber
10. Chicken
11. Turmeric Powder (Kunyit Powder)

Coconut milk rice

1. Wash the rice
2. Cook rice together with knotted pandan leaves, a pinch of salt, sliced shallots, and chunks of ginger in a rice cooker.
3. When rice is half cooked, pour in desired amount of coconut milk (depends on how much rice you cook)

Peanuts, Anchovies
1. Get unroasted peanuts (with skin) from the market. Tell them it's for frying, not for soup. The colour of the unroasted peanut should be light brown.
2. Heat up enough oil in a frying pan and fry peanuts in medium fire.
3. Keep tossing until peanuts turn to a slightly darker shade of brown, and then switch off fire.
4. Do not fry the peanuts in high fire as it'll most likely become burnt.

1. Peel anchovies or simply get peeled anchovies from the market.
2. Wash anchovies and drain them dry.
3. Fry anchovies in oil, also in low fire.
4. Patiently stir until anchovies turn golden brown.
5. Quickly turn off the fire and remove anchovies from hot oil. It may not seem crispy at this moment, but they will eventually become crispy once u leave it to cool on a plate.

Fried Kunyit Chicken
1. Marinate chicken with turmeric powder for about 1-2 hours.
2. Deep fry in oil, make sure that the fire is put to medium as to avoid burnt but uncooked chicken.

Lastly, cup the coconut rice in a bowl and place on a plate, fry a sunny side-up, slice some cucumbers and serve with fried kunyit chicken, peanuts, anchovies and sambal sotong.






Next post - Claypot Chicken Rice!! This one's a little tricky. Learnt how to cook this myself. Super delish according to those who tried. :D

Homemade Char Siew

I don't know about you but I'm quite particular when it comes to char siews. This is because I'm not at all a fan of 'sweet' food. I don't mean to say I don't like puddings or desserts.. just that, personally, any meat or vegetables eaten sweet is kinda strange, for example, 'ku lou yuk', sweet and sour fish etc. If it's something sweet, it has got to be real good... or else I won't eat it simply because I don't like sweet cooked food!! :D
So let's come back to the topic.. I usually won't opt for the typical dry, pale-looking char siews that are served when you order wan tan mee at any regular stall. No offence but the worst char siew I have tasted is Singapore's char siew!! I still remember it was wantanmee I ordered, it didn't look much different from our Malaysian wantanmee, except that it was red. the charsiew, the noodles, everything. And worst of all, it was so sweet!! Gosh. Won't try it again. On the other hand, I do know a place that sells quite good char siew. I can't remember what it's called but it is located in Sunway Mas near Aman Suria. I don't know how to describe how good it is, but you just can tell the difference when you see a good charsiew and an average char siew. LOL.
So I tried to make my own char siew, and I dare say it tastes better than the normal dry char siew as I mentioned just now :p

Here's the recipe, but unfortunately I only took one picture.



Char Siew

Ingredients
1. Pork Belly
2. Sugar
3. Salt
4. Pepper
5. Dark soy sauce
6. Light soy sauce

Method
1. Clean and leave the pork belly as one piece without cutting.
2. Marinate pork belly with sugar (i used raw sugar here. You can be quite generous with your sugar), dark soy sauce, light soy sauce, salt and pepper.
3. Bake in oven at about 190'c for 30mins each side, which means the baking time is about an hour.
4. When done, slice char siew and serve with white rice.

Tasty Onion Chicken

Hi all! Today's dish is a very simple and at the same time super tasty.. The only thing i need to use to cook this chicken dish is shallots. Easy! You will realize that most of my dishes will definitely consist of garlic and onion.. That's because they are not only healthy stuffs but they really give the dish that 'fragrance'. I love garlic and onion! I can eat them cooked or raw. Both yummy. Onion and garlic haters, u don't know what you're missing... Onions and garlic may give you bad breath if eaten raw, but absolutely healthy especially garlic!
I have a few friends who is very particular about not having any garlic or onions in their food.. But what they don't know is that garlic and onions are the ones that make ur food so yummy! Can you imagine hokkien mee, maggie goreng, etc without garlic? I can't :p

I used only shallots to cook this dish (not including the marinating part). What's special is that I don't slice the shallots like how i usually do, so they are their original onion shape. It may look very normal but the taste is yummmeh!!



Tasty onion chicken



Ingredients
1. Shallots (peeled, unsliced)
2. Chicken thigh

Method
1. Marinate chicken with oyster sauce, light soy sauce, fish sauce and a dash of pepper.
2. In a wok, add in oil and saute shallots. In this dish I don't slice the shallots.
3. Add in chicken and stir fry for about 3 mins and then add about 1cup of water, then close lid and let it simmer for 5-10mins. Make sure chicken is thoroughly cooked.
4. Open lid and keep stiring until sauce becomes thickish. I need not add any cornflour to thicken the sauce, but if it doesn't become thick, you can add cornflour.
5. Serve with white rice!