Malaysia food
Interests
Activities
Nasi lemak
Possibly the national dish of Malaysia and beloved by all local Malaysians is a dish known as nasi lemak.It’s something you most definitely must eat when you’re in Malaysia. There are a few different varieties of nasi lemak and many variations, but the basis of the dish is rice cooked in coconut milk, topped with spicy sambal chili sauce.
Ikan bakar
Ikan means fish, and bakar means grilled in Bahasa Malaysia, so ikan bakar is grilled fish – but it’s amazing marinated grilled fish! Ikan bakar is spiced up in a blend of chili paste, then grilled over charcoal on top of a banana leaf over the fire.
Banana leaf
The food served at Malaysia banana leaf restaurants is often of south Indian origin. You site down at a table with a banana leaf as your plate, and it doesn’t take long before the waiter dishs you a giant scoop of rice and a round of incredibly tasty vegetarian curries.
Nasi kandar
Nasi is rice, and a kandar is a stick or pole used as a support to carry things with. Formerly, in the Malaysian villages, the rice and curry was sold from mobile vendors who carried large pots of food using a kandar.Nowadays, nasi kandar basically refers to rice and Indian style curry.
Roti canai
Roti can mean different types of fried bread depending on where you are, and in Malaysia a roti canai is a thin piece of dough fried in lots of oil and served with a curry dipping sauce. The dough is first stretched out, slapped across a counter top, then folded into a small square, and fried in oil.
Curry laksa and Assam laksa
A great bowl of laksa will leave you stunned upon first bite – at least that’s what happened to me when I slurped up my very first bite of curry laksa in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah. There are two different kinds of laksa in Malaysia food, curry laksa and Assam laksa.
Char kuay teow
The dish includes wide rice noodles which are stir fried on high heat with shrimp, bean sprouts, chives, and often an egg. Char kuay teow is so good, you’ll immediately order another plate after finishing your first.
Hokkien mee
Another giant in the scene of Chinese style fried noodles is Hokkien mee, a recipe derived from the Fujian province of China. Like nearly all food in Malaysia, there are quite a few variations such as Hokkien hae mee, which is prawn noodles, and Hokkien char mee, which is dark colored fried noodles.
Nasi campur
While nasi kandar is the Indian version and economy rice is the Chinese version of rice topped with a selection of different dishes, nasi campur is the Malay version.
Bak kut teh
Translating directly to “meat bone tea,” this southeast Asian Chinese dish includes lots of pork, slow cooked until extremely tender in a broth filled with herbs and soothing spices. Buk kut teh is especially popular as a breakfast dish in Malaysia.
Tips
You need to shallow-fry the combined pastes in enough oil so that the oil separates from the paste as it cooks. This is how you know the paste is sufficiently cooked before moving on to the next steps of adding the tamarind juice and palm sugar and reducing the paste to a thick, oily sauce. If you undercook the paste it will taste raw.
If using a flat-bottomed pan instead of a wok you’ll need more oil to prevent the paste from sticking.
Be patient. The final paste has to reduce to the point where it’s thick, but at a low enough temperature so that it doesn’t burn. This requires near constant, gentle stirring.
Be light on the salt. As the paste reduces, the flavors intensify. Too much salt while reducing becomes far too much salt once fully reduced.
If the sambal does require added salt and you don’t want more fish flavor from belacan shrimp paste, add salt instead.
