Nasi Dagang recipe

Mmmmm........

Our kitchen is our mini bonding time for DH and I on some weekends when we undertake the task of cooking together. I cook for the family on weekdays and on weekends, DH would be the one who normally does the cooking. Occasionally, when the mood sets in, he'll go on a huge marketing spree and we'll then decide at the very last minute to call a few friends over.

Since we do not have a maid, our day starts right from the early morning till the evening, starting with the marketing, cleaning, chopping, slicing, cooking and washing the dishes. The rice will be soaked the night before. The kids love these cooking extravaganza weekends cos it means that they can watch unlimited cartoons or play games online while we toiled in the kitchen :-)
DH is a kelantanese and learnt this dish with recipe taken from the web, and improvised according to what we want. It's actually easy to cook, minus the time consuming processes in the preparation. With such a famous dish in the east coast, it would be a shame for those from the area who cooks but do not know how to cook this dish. Really! It's that easy!

A quick introduction on nasi dagang. It is a well known east coast of Malaysia and southern Thai dish, commonly eaten with 'kari ikan tongkol' (a type of Kelantanese style fish curry), accompanied by 'acar' (pickled vegetables), hard boiled eggs, salted fish, keropok and 'sambal belacan' (a type of chilli shrimp paste).

You can find the 'kari ikan tongkol' recipe in the next post.

'nasi dagang' and 'kari ikan tongkol'

The rice itself is rather reddish brown in colour and is like glutinuous rice. You may opt to use 'beras merah' (red rice) mixed with 'beras pulut' (glutinuous rice) as it can be quite hard to obtain it in KL area.

Below here is our version. Most of the ingredients here are just 'agak-agak' (based on estimation) on the ingredients used. You may improvise it according to your taste buds.

shallots, ginger and 'halba' (fenugreek seeds)

Nasi Dagang recipe for 8-10 pax :
Ingredients :

~ 1 kg beras nasi dagang (nasi dagang rice, or you may substitute it with a mixture of red rice and glutinuous rice)
~ Santan (coconut milk) from two coconut (you may opt to use lesser santan if you find it too 'lemak', or too rich)
~ one rice bowl full of peeled and chopped shallots
~ one knob of ginger, sliced and shredded (approximately palm size in length)
~ 1.5-2 tbsp biji halba (fenugreek seeds)
~ sugar to taste

Method :

1)  Soak the nasi dagang rice overnight in water to soften it.
2)  Discard water the next day and rinse rice. Heat up steamer.
     Place netting in the steamer and place the rice on top of the netting.
     (You may get this netting in sundry shops. We got our cotton netting from a fabric shop)
3)  Steam rice for 20 minutes in steamer.
4a) Remove rice and scoop them out into a huge clean pot.
      Add in some santan (approximately half).
      Stir well to mix the rice evenly with the santan.
4b) Scoop rice back into the steamer and steam rice for another 20 minutes.
5)  Remove rice once again and scoop them out into the earlier pot.
     Add in more santan (approximately one, depending on absorption)  
     to stir and blend in together with the rice. This will ensure that the rice absorb the santan)
5b) Once again, scoop rice back into the steamer and steam rice for another 5-10 minutes.
6)  Remove rice for the third and final time and scoop them out into the other pot.
     Pour in remaining santan. Add in shallots, ginger, halba and a little sugar. Stir evenly.
7)  Scoop rice back into the steamer and steam rice for approximately 5 minutes.
     Turn off fire after that and serve rice warm with the curry.

Appended below is a video for your reference on the steaming method of nasi dagang.

Do try it. You'll love it!  :-)