Nasi Lemak Hack part 1

You don't appreciate hassle-freeness of the regular nasi lemak which you regularly have for breakfast, until you tried cooking it yourself. You have to have prepare sambal, clean the ikan bilis and fry it. Find and buy peanuts and try to fry it without burning it to cinder...

In other words, its not a fast food! you need to go out, sweat and buy stuff to make a proper nasi lemak.

Our project this time is we're going to make an improper nasi lemak..
Improper because we want it quick and hassle free, kacang and ikan bilis ( peanuts and anchovies) have been omitted from this dish but just look at how delicious it is...

Some people might not like it though.. This is blasphemy! This is madness!

But before you say ah forget it lets just buy the usual in front of 7-11, the good thing  about cooking the rice yourself enables you to add as much spartan santan ( coconut milk) as you like, adding the lemak-ness like no other.

Now, for the rice you will need santan, ginger and daun pandan and some onions. Not the cucumber though.that one is for later..

Add all of them together in the rice cooker and leave it to cook, just look at how creamy that is.

We use kangkung as a substitute because cooking the vege is easy not to mention that kangkung is the cheapest but yummiest vegetables in the planet and very high in vitamin C. Cooking it is a no brainer. Put it in with water and boil it.

By the way, kangkung in english, is it watercress or spinach or is it another name? anyone knows?

Now for the sambal. You see in food hacking like in real hacking there's trial and error involved.  Rarely will you see accurate numeric measurements in our blog.

First add onions. No one ever complained of too much bawang in a sambal. Use as many as you want. If you want a measurement, nature has an interesting way to say when... Peel and chop the onions. Stop when your eyes are a blurry and you can't get visual on the knife that you're using. Wipe your tears away. Voila. Thats how many you need! ( but if you end up a one measly onion that's the natures way to say that you're a wimp).

Add chili powder or chili boh. how much to put? Just enough to cover the onions and a bit more. A matter of taste actually. Let the chili cook for a while. Uncooked chili taste foul. Make sure its cooked thoroughly. Add sugar and soy sauce (kicap) to the mixture. Sambal to me is like caramelised onions mixed with chili paste. The sugar and kicap adds to the caramelised part. Sugar to sweeten and kicap to add to that carammely look. By the way this sambal was cooked by eekwan my brother.

After the sambal is cooked, add Five ringgit worth of squids. Remember this is 2009. If you're reading this post in 2025, five ringgit would only get you half a sotong. So adjust according to the inflation rate.

When its ready, here we see Sambal Sotong in its natural habitat. The Kuali.

A closeup

Next fry an egg for each hungry person. Because frying is much faster then boiling an egg. Yes boiling is healthier but this is not the malaysian food healthy blog. Assemble everything together. This dish is fit for 5 people but that day it was finished by 3 very hungry people.