Nasi Lemak - Coconut Rice

Although nasi lemak has its roots in Malay culture, it is a dish cherished by all in this part of the world, including people of non-Malay origin. In fact, for many, it is a breakfast dish, sold in the early hours of the morning at roadside stalls in Malaysia. In Singapore, and Malaysia as well, you find nasi lemak also sold in hawker centres. Wrappers for the dish often come in the form of brown paper or banana leaf - the latter is the traditional wrapper. In certain restaurants, nasi lemak comes in a platter.
Knotted pandan leaves (screwpine) as shown in the accompanying photo are added into the rice while steaming to give the nasi lemak its fragrance. For additional fragrance spices such as ginger and herbs such as lemon grass are added. Nasi lemak is incomplete without the cucumber slices, small dried ikan bilis (anchovies), roasted peanuts, and hot spicy sambal (sauce). Sliced hard boiled egg could also be added. For those who want better variety, the dish can also come with chicken, cuttlefish, cockle, stir fried kangkong (water convolvulus), achar (pickled vegetables), or beef rendang (beef stewed in coconut milk and spices) - all spicy in nature. The next section is a video to explain what I've said so far. If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video must be worth a million words.

For the nasi lemak recipes and how to make this dish, here are two useful sites I found through searches:
(1) RasaMalaysia.
(2) Singapore Local Favorites.

Because the people of Malaysia and Singapore come from different ethnic backgrounds, it resulted in nasi lemak coming in different versions: Indian version, Chinese version and vegetarian version. For the full Wikipedia article on nasi lemak, here is the link: Nasi Lemak.

If you happen to be in Singapore and are wondering where to look for good nasi lemak, I recommend you to serve the local search engine known as ST701.

(1) Official Secret Restaurant Recipes.
(2) The E-Cookbook Library
(3) 500+ Healthy Chineses Recipes Cookbook