Kimi's favourite food

Nasi Kerabu Kelantan (Kelantan Herb Rice Salad)

Nasi Ulam (Herb Rice Salad) is a feature in Malay cuisine, usually it’s a steamed rice mixed with various herbs, vegetables, spices and accompanied with various side dishes. There’s 2 popular variation – Nasi Ulam on the northwest Peninsular Malaysia and Nasi Kerabu (with rice dyed blue) on the northeast Peninsular Malaysia, in state of Kelantan and Terengganu.

Nasi Kerabu is one of the classic dishes of Kelantan. Kerabu is Malay salad with a mixture of herbs, vegetables and fruits. Just like the northern Nasi Ulam recipe, Nasi Kerabu Kelantan is also a very healthy dish, that requires a lot of slicing action of herbs and vegetables. But Nasi Kerabu requires much more tedious preparation work due to many components that makes up the dish. If you know me by now, I would skip a tedious recipe. Actually my eyes did start to glaze before I could reach half of the instruction.. It happens every time I read something complicated, scientific or historical, it’s like my mind just automatically switched to ‘sleeping mode’.

For me to go through all that “pain”, the dish have to be really terrific. If I see Nasi Kerabu sold at pasar malam (night market) or any restaurants, I would order it.  And my love for Nasi Kerabu has pulled me through this laborious cooking attempt. Sweating (the temperatures are high and dry now) through almost 3 hours in the kitchen with the most elaborate dish I’ve ever attempted, making Nasi Kerabu Kelantan is so worth it!

The basic Nasi Kerabu comprises of rice, mixture of herbs & vegetable (ulam), coconut flaked fish (kerisik sambal ikan) and coconut sauce (sambal tumis kelapa). Besides the most common Blue rice (Nasi Biru), there’s other variation of the rice served – white (plain white rice), yellow (with turmeric) and grey (from Mengkudu leaves / Noni). The blue color of rice results from cooking in the butterfly-pea flowers (bunga telang). A few months earlier, my reader Carina send me some dried butterfly-pea flowers (which I never got around using), and the weekend before, mama gave me a bunch of fresh ones from her friend’s house. Mamam would add a handful to her rice because there’s no ‘blue’ food in her daily diet, so this flower completes the “blue” in the colour foodchart. Some people say the flower has some health benefits but it has not been scientifically proven.

With the basic Nasi Kerabu, it can served with these side dishes/accompaniments:
Prawn Crackers (Keropok)
Boiled Salted Egg (Telur Masin)
Fish Stuffed Chilli (Solok Lada)
Turmeric Fried Fish (Ikan Goreng Tepung) – recipe below
Grilled Beef (Daging Bakar) – recipe below
Fried Chicken (Ayam Goreng)