Nasi Lemak Recipe (Malaysian Coconut Milk Rice with Anchovies Sambal)

Ingredients :


Coconut Milk Steamed Rice

- 2 cups of rice
- 3 screwpine leaves (tie them into a knot as shown)
- Salt to taste
- 1 small can of coconut milk (5.6 oz size)
- Some water



Tamarind Juice

 
- 1 cup of water
- Tamarind pulp (size of a small ping pong ball)









 Sambal Ikan Bilis (Dried anchovies sambal)

- 1/2 red onion
- 1 cup ikan bilis (dried anchovies)
- 1 clove garlic
- 4 shallots
- 10 dried chillies
- 1 teaspoon of belacan (prawn paste)
- 1/4 teaspoon of salt
- 1 tablespoon of sugar



 Other ingredients

- 2 hard boiled eggs (cut into half)
- 3 small fish (sardines or smelt fish)
- 1 small cucumber (cut into slices and then quartered)








Method :

1. Just like making steamed rice, rinse your rice and drain. Add the coconut milk, a pinch of salt, and some water. Add the pandan leaves into the rice and cook your rice.
2. Rinse the dried anchovies and drain the water. Fry the anchovies until they turn light brown and put aside.
3. Pound the prawn paste together with shallots, garlic, and deseeded dried chilies with a mortar and pestle. You can also grind them with a food processor.
4. Slice the red onion into rings.
5. Soak the tamarind pulp in water for 15 minutes. Squeeze the tamarind constantly to extract the flavor into the water. Drain the pulp and save the tamarind juice.
6. Heat some oil in a pan and fry the spice paste until fragrant.
7. Add in the onion rings.
8. Add in the ikan bilis and stir well.
9. Add tamarind juice, salt, and sugar.
10. Simmer on low heat until the gravy thickens. Set aside.
11. Clean the small fish, cut them into half and season with salt. Deep fry.
12. Cut the cucumber into slices and then quartered into four small pieces.
13. Dish up the steamed coconut milk rice and pour some sambal ikan bilis on top of the rice.
14. Serve with fried fish, cucumber slices, and hard-boiled eggs.

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Facts About Sugar Crystals

      When most people think of sugar crystals they think of the little colored sprinkles that are found on cakes and other confections. These little sugar crystals are a favorite of the old and young alike as they give baked goods a colorful, fun look. Not only used to decorate, sugar crystals can be found in bake shops and homes around the world.

Sugar Crystals

       Sugar crystals are actually a crystallized form of glucose. The sugar crystals are made from sugarcane and sugar beets. These sugar crystals are counted in the 130 million metric tons of sugar that are grown and produced world wide each year.

Purpose of Sugar Crystals

       While many people think of sugar crystals as purely a form of decoration, the crystallized glucose is also used to preserve food. Sugar crystals are very popular with bakers, as they have been for centuries, instantly providing the sweetness that certain baked goods require. Sugar crystals make sweetening baked items, drinks and other foods simple as measurement and storage is straightforward.

History of Sugar Crystals

      Sugarcane has been crystallized and used for baking and food preservation for centuries. The process of crystallizing sugarcane was first done in South Asia in 30 A.D. by East Indians. Later, the process of crystallizing sugar became very popular in Europe and from there the process spread around the world and is commonplace today.

 

Cultural Significance of Sugar Crystals

 
    Sugar crystals, and sugar in general, is culturally significant as it is an article of trade for many countries across the world. For instance, the United States and Japan support the crystallization of sugar and then impose high tariffs on the sugar. Countries such as Brazil, India, China, Thailand, Pakistan and Mexico all depend on their sugar production to keep their economy afloat.

Health Considerations of Sugar Crystals

     While sugar crystals are very important culturally and used the world over by cooks and bakers to enrich their food products, the nutritional deficiencies of sugar have been blamed for many health conditions. For instance, sugar has been linked to tooth decay, type 2 diabetes and obesity in countries around the world where sugar is used in abundance. Though the use of sugar in moderation has not been linked to ill health.

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Importance of Spices in Foods

How Importance of Spices in Foods?

     Spices is a broad term used to describe herbal by-products that add flavor and aesthetic, aromatic and therapeutic treatments to food, drink and other items. Taken from the leaf, flower, roots, bark or nuts of a plant, spices are usually dried and ground to be mixed with other ingredients. Spices appeal to the five senses and influence cultures and societies through trade and daily use.

History

     From the mundane to the exotic, the use of spices can be traced back to the Middle Ages with nutmeg and garlic, among others. Trading spices among different cultures and countries over the centuries became a means of acquiring and flaunting power and influence, to the point of launching expeditions to find more spices in other places. As the spices were discovered, so were other continents, such as North and South America, bringing worldwide exploration, trade and commerce into being.

Features

     The use of spices in food and drink enhances the flavor and aroma of any dish. Whether salty, sweet, bold or delicate, each spice has its own  merits. Individual palates vary as to what tastes good together and what doesn't. Cultures gravitate toward spices native to their homeland or borrow from others. India, for example, relies heavily on its own production of peppercorns, but they are frequently found in British cuisine, as well.

Visual Effect

       Spices change the physical appearance of food and other products, giving things a sprinkle of color, such as pepper, or changing the hue entirely, as in turmeric or paprika. Some are used in dyeing fabric, like tea. Spices also change the texture of things, such as coarse salt or sugar sprinkled on top of snacks and desserts. They act as preservatives of meat and other foods which would otherwise spoil, as in pickling spices.

Function

 

     Valued for more than just taste and appearance, spices have nutritional and medicinal merits, as well, although they are sometimes better known as home remedies than proven treatments in medicine. Ginger, for example, is well known as a helpful digestive aid. Garlic is touted for preserving memory and keeping a heart healthy. Turmeric has long been used as a home remedy against common colds and influenza. A recent study by the U.S. Department of Agriculture has suggested that oregano is a powerful antioxidant.

Significance

    Some spices are so aromatic that they are not only used in food, but they are also used to enhance other products. Cinnamon, for example, is not only a popular flavor in oatmeal, pastries and coffee, but has become a basic scent in candles, air fresheners and hand lotion. Other items, like lavender, are used for their calming effects in incense sticks, bath oils and tea. Pungent odors are also useful tools from spices, like the smells of frankincense and myrrh used in religious ceremonies and burial rituals.

The Fact is... Spices also help to Fight disease... :)

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The Importants of Food to Human Being...

How important is food to human society?

How important is food to human society?
Outside of the insanely obvious -- without food, we'd all soon become so much human compost -- it turns out that food, especially the availability of it or the lack thereof, has helped determine pretty much every aspect of human history and development.

That's the most fascinating lesson Jared Diamond provides in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies." A professor of geography at UCLA, Diamond starts by asking a question that's probably occurred to many of us at one time or another: Why, given there's no scientific reason to believe any one group or race of people is smarter or more inventive than any other, did human cultures evolve along such different paths? Why, for instance, did Europeans sail to and eventually take over much of North America and Australia, eliminating or displacing those regions' native peoples, rather than the other way around? Why did the earliest civilizations arise where they did?

The answer to all those questions ultimately rests with food. Areas with a diverse and plentiful supply of easily domesticated plants and animals had a built-in advantage over regions with fewer such food sources. Domesticable plants and animals gave rise to agriculture, which enabled people to settle down in farm communities, produce enough food to allow some people to specialize in trades other than food cultivations, build large populations and complex political systems, and eventually develop resistance to animal-origin epidemic diseases like smallpox, measles, tuberculosis and more. Those advantages have cascaded down to present-day societies, explaining why there are still such disparities in wealth and economic development around the globe.

It all comes down to food. And that's why we should keep our food choices not only healthful, but natureal, green and sustainable. Food is culture. Food is life. Food is nature, and so are we. And, as Diamond demonstrated so persuasively in a subsequent book, "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed," when people start messing with nature in ways that can't be sustained, a society's very existence can be threatened.


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