Written by Janice of Makan Time.

So that I’m clear, this article is just about the rice dishes I like to eat when I go home to Malaysia. This is the story of a day of eating rice.

I’m a self banished Malaysian lucky enough to live sunny/cloudy Sydney, Australia. Lucky because it’s got the warm beaches that I rarely get to go to, the lovely cafes which I try to not buy coffee from (I’m saving to buy a home and the coffee is often far too good to not buy), and the brilliant food and restaurant scene which I indulge too often in. I’m also lucky that the proximity of Australia to Asia, and its huge Asian population means that I’m never too far from Malaysian comfort food.

Anyway, back to the main point of this article. I travel back to Malaysia every year to visit my parents. My lovely parents are well aware that they’ve somehow managed to breed a daughter who just loves to eat all day. Seeing as I only get to go home once a year, how can they not indulge their gluttonous daughter?

Ah.. lucky me.

First of all, let me declare that I love rice. Not all dishes in Malaysia need to have rice, but I do have a preference, hence the many rice dishes featured here.

I decided to focus this article on a day of eating rice based dishes that would cover the different cuisines available in Malaysia. Thought not at all a list indicative of Malaysian cuisine, I hope it does encourage readers to try all types of food, should they ever visit Malaysia – land of meals for every hour of the day.

Malaysia is made up of three major racial groups, the Malays, the Chinese and the Indians. Due to a long history of inter-mingling, food in Malaysia has evolved to incorporate influences from different races. I don’t think anybody can claim not to like or eat food from other races on a regular basis, just because food culture is so diverse. I think Malaysians in general, are foodies. Bump into someone and they can tell you where to get the best of this or that and why it’s the best.

Nasi Lemak is probably the dish most representative of Malaysia. Translated, it means fat rice but really, it’s just rice cooked in coconut milk flavoured with pandan (screwpine leaf). It’s Malay by origin, but each race has modified it in some way to make their own version of it. It’s always served with a sambal sauce. Sambal is a spicy sauce made from fresh chillies , garlic and onions. Most versions of the rice is served with deep fried dried anchovies and roasted peanuts. I like mine with a piece of either hard-boiled or fried egg. Nasi lemak can be eaten for breakfast or even lunch and dinner, where it is usually supplemented with other dishes like curry or fried chicken.

For the Chinese, I think the most representative dish could possibly be chicken rice. Originally known as Hainanese Chicken Rice, most people have adapted it to their own tastes. It is my favourite lunch choice. The Malacca version pictured here is special because the rice is served shaped in little round balls. Some people think that in olden times, the rice was rolled into the little golf ball size shape to keep the rice warm until mealtime as it is usually cooked earlier in the day.

Chicken rice is especially flavoursome because it is cooked in a chicken stock which gives the rice a savoury, meaty taste. It is served with boiled chicken but most stalls offer another choice of roasted chicken as well. The chicken is always cooked whole and is chopped into pieces to be served with a soy and sesame oil sauce and slices of fresh cucumber. A dip of chilli sauce, pounded ginger and dark sweet soy sauce perfectly offsets the chicken and rice.

Tea-time usually brings a host of choices but today, I’ve chosen to go for the Nyonya
kuihs which are basically a type of Malaysian bite-sized sweets. Kuih is the Asian version of cakes and pastries. It is usually steamed, baked or sometimes fried. The Baba-Nonya are a race descended from earlier Chinese immigrants that inter-married with the local Malays. This produced a culture with a unique cuisine influenced by both cultures.

For today’s afternoon tea, I ordered three types of sweets. The blue and white one is known as Pulut Tai Tai. It is made from glutinous rice steamed with coconut. A local blue flower is used to give it the blue colouring. It is served with a sweet Malaysian type of custard called kaya, which is made from coconut milk and eggs.

The other kuihs in the picture are kuih talam (tray cake) and kuih lapis (layer cake) which consists of two layers. The top white layer is made from rice flour and coconut milk, while the bottom green layer is made from green pea flour and extract of pandan leaf. It is best to eat kuih with a cup of milky sweet tea.

I’ve opted to have a yet another popular rice dish banana leaf rice for dinner. It’s an Indian meal served up on a piece of banana leaf. You start off with the waiter dishing up rice followed by options you get to pick. Must haves include dhal curry generously ladled onto the steamed rice. Most people go for the steamed white rice option as it perfectly offsets the different flavours and spices in the accompanying dishes.

Served with the rice is my favourite side dish of deep fried bitter gourd. The version pictured here (big pile of red coloured pieces) is pieces of bitter gourd dipped into a batter spiced with red chilli powder. Going in a clockwise order, there are servings of chicken stirfried with black pepper, mutton curry, green spinach puree, tandoori chicken, cucumber in yoghurt and the yellow pile in the middle is a mild potato curry.

Malaysians usually like to go for supper late at night. I had to look high and low for my favourite stall because it had moved, but after a couple of days asking around, I found it! Bak Kut Teh is the dish that I must eat when I go home. It is a soup of pork ribs boiled with spices. It is a rich, tasty soup filled with soft pork, tofu and mushrooms. I eat it with a bowl of yam rice. It is rice that is cooked with little chunks of yam and dried shrimp. I can still imagine the taste of the soup, sitting by the roadside, sweat dripping off my forehead.. pity I was too busy eating to take a picture!

It’s been tough trying to squeeze everything I want into this little article about the food from Malaysia. Hopefully, it gives you a little idea about the diversity of food in Malaysia and how something so simple ingredient like rice can be interpreted in so many ways by different cultures.