Nasi lemak (Malay) literally means “fat rice”, but the term lemak always means “cooked in coconut milk”. The name is used to describe popular breakfast dish which includes rice cooked in coconut milk. There appear to be two different traditions:

1. The version I know, shown in the photo above and documented in some cookbooks, includes some form of curry (usually not a genuine curry), ikan bilis (small, dried salted fish, about 2 cm long, which I'm told are like small anchovies), fried peanuts, cucumber and sambal ulek (effectively pure chili paste). You'll frequently see the name spelt in the old Indonesian way: sambal oelek.
2. There appears to be an alternative tradition using fried meat and fish along with boiled or fried eggs. The peanuts, cucumber and sambal remain. Here's a photo of one such that I had in Singapore. Sorry for the poor quality:

   

   Apart from the spectacularly unhappy fried egg, notice also the much smaller peanuts (in their inner husk) and two larger fish instead of ikan bilis.

As in the case of many recipes, people used to one tradition consider the other “wrong”. I'm agnostic, but I prefer some juice with the rice, and I know the first form better, so that's what I'll describe.

This page was originally written in June 2003, at a time when relatively little on the subject was to be found on the web. Since then, a number of pages have appeared. There's now a wikepedia page on the topic, and in March 2008, nearly 5 years later, I found a self-styled nasi lemak primer which, though it's clearly biased, acknowledges these two traditions:

Fried chicken is the best complement to nasi lemak. Some may prefer curry chicken, fried fish, sotong or beef rendang. That's a matter of personal preference - I like it with fried chicken.

Sotong is cuttlefish; I would expect it to be dried and maybe fried or processed to a curry for this use.

Nasi lemak is not a difficult dish to make, as it shouldn't be for breakfast, but as usual the devil's in the details. For some reason the choice of curry is different from what you would normally eat. Here's what I'm working on at the moment.

Nasi lemak

quantity	ingredient
400g	Rice
200 ml (½ can)	canned coconut milk
	salt
	Pandan leaf (daun pandan)
	water to cover

How much pandan leaf? Nobody will tell you. It imparts a distinctive aroma to the rice, and purists will tell you that it's not nasi lemak without it. In fact, it's not completely essential, though the result is certainly much better with it.

Mix the ingredients and cook until the liquid has been absorbed, stirring all the while to avoid the coconut milk burning on the bottom of the saucepan. Cover, turn heat off, and leave for 20 minutes. This quantity produces 6 servings, which I put in Chinese rice bowls for rewarming in the microwave oven before use: the rice is stickier than normal cooked rice.

The accompaniments

The quantities of ikan bilis and peanuts are non-critical. I take sufficient to cover a circle of about 5 cm diameter each on the plate (another way of saying I haven't weighed them). The peanuts should be raw and unsalted. In Singapore they frequently still have the inner skin on them. I deep fry them, first the peanuts, then the ikan bilis, in a small pot of oil at 180° and then pour them out through a sieve. The peanuts are very sensitive to the frying time: overdo it and they burn. Underdo it and they don't taste right. The right time is when the bubbles start to subside and they start to change colour. That's the reason for pouring through a sieve: otherwise you can't get them out fast enough.

The curries

I'm still playing around with the right kind of curry for nasi lemak. Here's the mutton curry shown on the photo above. I also have a recipe for Ayam lemak, chicken in coconut sauce, which also tastes good.

Serving

For serving, a microwave oven is your friend. I use one rated at 1 kW, and that's what the times refer to.

To serve the dish, place the the ikan bilis and peanuts on one side of a plate and heat in the microwave oven for about 30 seconds. Then heat one of the bowls of rice it in the microwave oven for about one minute. Make sure it's covered: for some reason nasi lemak spits, while plain cooked rice doesn't. Put the rice on the other side of the plate and put a few spoons of curry in the bowl and heat for about 30 seconds, then pour over the rice.

Put a few slices of cucumber (usually served with the skin still on) on the plate and serve with sambal ulek. I tend to serve the sambal at the table, so it's not on the photo.