Nasi Ayam - Chicken Rice

A complete plate of Nasi Ayam - served with some soup, cucumbers, tomatoes, iceberg lettuce, fried chicken, chilli and soy sauce

At the end of last semester I had some friends over for Malaysian food and I decided to make Nasi Ayam (literally translated to chicken rice). 

I usually feel discouraged when I try to make Malaysian food because it seems like it needs a lot of work, and a long time is needed in the kitchen. So when it is only for myself I will end up not doing it - that's why I prefer to have friends over to enjoy the meal together. I still haven't tried gulai or rendang though. One day, maybe.

After asking my mom, my sister and finally selecting one recipe from the internet, I set out to cook my first ever attempt at Nasi Ayam. I got a good recipe from here.

There are four parts to cooking chicken rice - the soup, the rice, the fried chicken and the chilli and soy sauce. The chicken will be boiled to become the chicken broth/soup, and then some of the broth will be used to cook the rice and to add in the chilli. We waste nothing :p 

The first thing to do is to blend some garlic and ginger together. This mix will be used for all the four parts so I used about 15 garlic cloves and a thumb of ginger. 

1. the Chicken Broth/Soup

- heat some oil
-sautee the blend of garlic and ginger (about 2 cloves of garlic and some ginger)
-put in 1 whole chicken (cut up in big pieces)
-add about 2 litres of water and 1 cube of chicken stock
-let the water come to a boil and cook until the chicken is tender (but not too long as we are going to fry the chicken later)
- take out the chicken and proceed to step 2

2. the Fried Chicken

- add some light soy sauce, sweet soy sauce, oyster sauce and some blended ginger and let them marinate while you prepare the rice

-after that, just fry the chicken 

3. the Chicken Rice

- this is for 6 cups of rice
- 7 cups of the chicken broth
- 4 tablespoons of butter
- some pandan leaves
- some spices :

The spices - cinnamon bark, lemongrass, star anise, cardamom and a blended mix of ginger and garlic 

I did the following steps in the rice cooker so that it will be easy to cook the rice as usual afterwards :-

- heat the butter 

- add in the blended ginger and garlic, pandan leaf and the spices

- add in the rice, stir well until you can smell the yummy smell

- add in the water, some turmeric for color, and salt

-cover the rice cooker and let it do its job

before serving take out the pandan leaves, the lemongrass and the spices

4. the Chilli (and the Soy Sauce)

-chilli : blend red chillies, garlic and ginger

- add salt, some sugar, vinegar and some of the chicken broth

-soy sauce : add some of the chicken soup to some sweet soy sauce - that's it

As for the side salads, we usually use iceberg lettuce, cucumbers and fresh tomatoes. And for the soup, some green onions.

Ready to eat! Afiyet Olsun

At the same time, my Turkish neighbour gave some Turkish food -
so those two dishes at the top were from her (peas and Turkish rice)