Authentic Malaysian Nasi Lemak and Penang Char Keow Teow in the park

Malaysian Nasi Lemak

My jalan-jalan cari makan friends got together on the first weekend of July and celebrated Canada Day by going to Barnet Marine Park for a picnic. Each of us contributed to the picnic with fruits, cakes and other familiar home made desserts. One of the friend came with nasi lemak (coconut milk fragrant rice) specially wrapped with sambal anchovies, ground nuts, cut cucumbers and egg. Although simple, the nasi lemak cuisine was really tasty and flavourful. It was the best nasi lemak cuisine I have eaten in a long time. The nasi lemak was cooked with basmati rice, coconut milk, slices of ginger and screw pine leaves. Whereas the sambal was prepacked sambal paste from the brand "Chillies", which can be found in most Asian grocery stores.

Penang Char Keow Teow

The rest of the condiments were garnished on top of the fragrant rice and sambal before wrapping up the nasi lemak with banana leaf and parchment paper. Although the finished product looked really simple and takes less than five minutes to eat, the preparation, cooking and wrapping processes could have taken at least two hours. That too, did not account for the time sourcing for the ingredients.

Same with Penang Char Keow Teow, the finished product looks fairly simple but it takes a lot of time and effort to prepare. The ingredients for Char Keow Teow are flat rice noodles, shrimps, fish cakes, bean sprouts, Chinese sausages, chives, clams, eggs, cooking oil (or lard) and a special concoction of sauces.

Char Keow Teow in the wok

And besides that, the skill and experience to frying a really good plate of the famous Penang Char Keow Teow is never easy to follow or emulate. It is never a secret among my friends that I fry the Char Keow Teow in front of them, a plate at a time. The technique seems simple and I have even taught some of the friends. And anyone could have copied and learned the technique but till today nobody could.  So, I have to do all the frying myself. And that is hard work and stresses me out having to fry between thirty to sixty plates in two sometimes three hours depending on how big the group was. Also, for the benefit of my friends, I only do this occasionally and with a small group at a time. Therefore, every plate of the Char Keow Teow that I fry would be consistent. And I have a system which I follow diligently.