Friday 15 February 2013

Nasi minyak abang kahwin sedunia

Nasi minyak. The Malay delicacy which is normally served during wedding season. If you could not find nasi minyak in a wedding ceremony, I bet that wedding must not be a typical one. Though there are no wedding happening in Newcastle Upon Tyne at the moment, I cook nasi minyak just for fun. I was invited to attend my friends' brothers wedding back in Malaysia. But, obviously I could not attend those due to being at a far far away land of King Athur's United Kingdom, so I decided to cook that special meal in a way to celebrate the happiness. Furthermore, my brother will be getting married soon, so why not have a try, right?

My mom once told me that preparing nasi minyak is similar to preparing nasi tomato. I just need to substitute tomato with ghee instead. So that was how I did last time. This time, I reduced the use of clover, cardamom, star anise and cinnamon from the previous nasi tomato dosage. My mom warned me to do so if I wanted to reduce the strong smell of these herbs on rice. I found that the ghee is so saturated that I decided to reduce the amount used in my rice. When I inserted my finger to measure the level of liquid need before steaming the rice, the liquidified ghee even sticked on my finger and I could only wash it with hand-wash liquid and extra rinsing. For this time, I added a spoon of biryani powder to just add some flavour in it. Though the original nasi minyak is a bit yellowish, I decided not to put the colouring essence to leave it as natural as it is. Adding colouring is not chemically good either.

So, my rice was done. I needed to cook the side dishes. Normally, nasi minyak is served with curry, vegetable, ayam masak merah and etc depending on people favourites. As for me, I chose to cook ayam masak merah and prepare mixed vegetable slices called acar mentah. the foundation of ayam masak merah is basically, chilies cooked with onions, garlics and tomatoes puree. The foundation needs to be fried until the oil resurfaces. Then, you just need to add the fried chicken into it. Make sure the chilies are fried well so that the taste is not bitter.

Preparing acar was a bit challenging for me as I am not a person who like to cut things to very small slices. To be exact, I am quite lazy to take longer time to prepare a meal. So, for this one, I tried harder to slice carrot, cucmber, chilies, and big shallot nicely till I nearly cut my thumb if extra force was keen on the knife. After finished slicing, for flavouring, I added lemon juice and sugar liquid. And, yeay my acar was done. I called it acar happily ever after. The colourful mix of vegetables just made my day and added the colour of the dishes.

Not to forget, I fried some papadom as well to finish up the serving plate variety. What is papadom? Google it. It basically is a cracker made from flour and some spices maybe? I'm not sure how they make it, but the taste is good. Some of papadom recipe may be a bit salty. If you are not a person who cares enough about your diet, it is worth a try.

My nasi minyak and its side dishes are now done. For recipe, please google it somewhere as I don't really know exactly what amount I'm putting into the cookware. What I can say is IT IS DELICIOUS. #perasan.

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