Reviewing Malay Taste - Nasi Goreng paste

I got chatting on Facebook the other day to the very lovely Jack from Hungry Communic-ations, about Nem Viet and their range of Vietnamese food products.  During the conversation he mentioned that Nem Viet has two sister product ranges, being Malay Taste and Thai Taste and I have to admit, that I dropped huge hints about maybe reviewing some of the products on the blog.

Well, this is the first of said reviews.  *chuckle*  With many thanks to Jack for taking me up on my ever-so-slightly embarrassingly overkeen offer.

As soon as I saw a Nasi Goreng paste was in the box, I knew what we'd be sampling first.  My dedication to a good Nasi Goreng is well documented on this blog and in the spirit of same, let me just direct you to my own home-made version which you'll find here.

Even though there is a perfectly reasonable Nasi Goreng recipe on the side of the jar, I am so keen on the stuff that I couldn't bear it not to carry some of the flavours that I know it should.  Hence, I followed my own recipe, but instead of using red Thai chilli paste, I used the Malay Taste Nasi Goreng paste.

Now, ordinarily, I don't use either oyster sauce or tomato paste in my Nasi Goreng but they are in the Malay Taste paste so I was interested to see how it would shape up with these two new flavours.

I added dark soy sauce, rice wine vinegar and fish sauce to the Nasi Goreng paste which helped to ensure that the flavours that I remembered so well were there.  However, I wasn't keen on the addition of tomato paste to the Malay Taste Nasi Goreng paste.  I felt that it was something of a Westernised copout.  I definitely missed the Thai lemongrass flavours and to add that in and either no tomato paste or just a little, would have improved the product no end.

Still, for all that, I liked it.  No, I really did!  If I was to give my own home-made Nasi Goreng marks out of 10, it would be a 10 (naturally).  The Malay Taste Nasi Goreng would come in at a good 8.5 by comparison.  Just lost a couple of points for the tomato paste and no lemongrass.

The chilli flavour is really good.  It doesn't knock your head off, just builds to a nice heat and keeps on a steady course instead of constantly increasing until you can't stand it any more, as lots of them do.  I like the oyster sauce addition, it gives it a deeper flavour profile than just fish sauce would have.

If I had have gone to someone's house for dinner and they'd have served Malay Taste Nasi Goreng, I wouldn't be disappointed.  It's different to mine, but it's still Nasi Goreng and that definitely floats my boat.

You can find out where to buy Malay Taste products from their website, on the "Where to buy" page.  One of the outlets is Amazon UK, so you've no excuse not to try them!  Currently there is just the Nasi Goreng kit available at around £2.50 for the one (you have to buy 6 in one go, so maybe get some for all the family or add the neighbours in!).

I'm very much looking forward to trying the other products now!

A little bit of a lamby week, this week! Meal plan w/b 4.10.11

As ever, before I get onto this week (which has turned out to be a little bit lamby), let me just tell you about last Sunday's dinner.  Well, it was very exciting, you see!

I had bought a piece of roasting bacon (as opposed to a rasher of bacon, which wouldn't roast at all well) which I put into the slow cooker with some lovely stock vegetables and a covering of water.  Some 4-5 hours later, it was beautifully tender, sweet and juicy.  Now you may remember that I was hedging my bets where the accompanying vegetables were concerned, owing to the weather.  Ultimately, we went with a seasonal compromise.  We had some new potatoes in the cupboard and so had these steamed with ... drum roll ... green beans and brussels sprouts ... from the garden!  Ta daaaa!  (Oh, and some carrots and swede from the supermarket).  Match that lot up with a lovely parsley sauce made with fresh parsley and you've got a very successful Sunday dinner.

I was so excited to be eating our first brussels sprouts!  They were gorgeous, because they're so new - just babies really - they hadn't grown into those big old hoary sprouts that you sometimes find in the supermarket.  They were crisp from being just picked, mild and crunchy.  Now that sort of excitement is why so many people grow their own veg., I'm sure of it.

We're hoping that the Romanescu cauliflowers come to something too - but they're looking a bit random at the moment.  Not sure what they're supposed to look like at this stage - does anybody know?

I won't worry if all we get are these little fellows - I'm sure they still taste nice, even if they're not quite what they're supposed to be!


So, that excitement over, let's turn our attention to what you might find appearing in Rhubarb & Ginger this week.

Tues : Pizza all round

Weds : Keema Mutter, Vegetable Curry & white rice

Thurs : Shop-bought steak & kidney pie with home grown veg.

Fri : Bacon & Leek Pasta

Sat : Nasi Goreng

Sun : Lamb & boulangere potatoes, home grown veg.

Mon : Tortellini in sauce, with garlic bread.

Hubby and I didn't get to have anything special on Tuesday, because I had an appointment right at the time I should have been cooking.  Hence we opted for the easy avenue and hubby took care of dinner, which was pizza-shaped.  Mind you, I was pleased to find a "sensibly sized" (i.e. smaller than an entire dinner plate) pizza in the supermarket.  I find these gigantic pizzas that overflow your plate just too much food.  Hubby always took care of the leftovers for breakfast the following day, but that's not recommended practice on a regular basis.

Now, Wednesday's dinner I was really looking forward to making.  I'd found a recipe for Keema Mutter (which translates as lamb mince with peas) which looked not only easy to make, but really tasty.  I intended to serve it just with white rice, but then had a bright idea.  Looking at the recipe, I thought that it sounded like it could be a bit lively in the chilli department - in which case, we'd probably (well, those of us who don't go by the nickname of ChilliBob, that is) be requiring something to balance that with.  So I decided to make a plain old vegetable curry, which I hoped would do that job, along with the white rice.

I won't witter on about it now, as I've promised it its own blog posting - it was that good.  If you like curries, make sure to come back and take a look!

Hubby's in charge of dinner on Thursday evening, when we're indulging in a shop-bought Steak & Kidney pie, for ease.  Fingers crossed, we'll be able to have some more of those home-grown veggies with the pie!

We had an unexpected visitor today (Thursday), in that my lovely friend and ex-colleague Jenny (yes, another Jenny!) was in the area and popped in for a cuppa and to say hello.  Well, I couldn't let her go away without a bite of something - so made Jack Knight's Mum's Library Book Marmalade Cake.

Again, this was such an unbridled success that I shall be blogging the results.  However, if you're curious about the recipe, why not go along to Jack's Blog and see!

We've an extra mouth to feed on Friday, as one of son & heir's friends from school will be in for dinner that day.  They are working on a homework project to build a mini moonbuggy (in my day, it was a papier mache volcano - how times have changed!) so will be consulting with hubby over the electronics for same.

It's just as well, therefore, that I was already planning a simple dish like Bacon & Leek Pasta.  The friend is notoriously difficult to feed (his Mum sent a message that "he only likes sausages"), but I'm hoping that the extreme yumminess of this pasta dish will win him over.  It's bacon - what could go wrong?  Everyone likes bacon!

I've had a sudden fancy for Nasi Goreng.  It's funny how it happens like that.  The last sudden fancy I had, was for "something in a cheese sauce" - and so the Cauliflower Cheese happened.

I've loved Nasi Goreng for as long as I've known about it, I think.  I suspect that my earliest memories of it are when my parents would buy it in huge tins from the NAAFI shop in Germany (when my Dad was stationed there with the Army).  We'd have it for tea - I suspect it was just a simple heating up job, probably in a frying pan, and I absolutely loved it.  I wonder if you can get it nowadays?  Considering that was around forty-mumble years ago, I doubt it!

Sunday's Lamb & boulangere potatoes is another new dish.  I love lamb, but it's just that bit too pricey to buy anything other than mince at the moment.  However, lamb mince is better than no lamb at all, so it's just a matter of working out different ways of cooking it.

I made a very successful dish of Boulangere potatoes in the recent past and considering that the potatoes that go on the top of a hot pot are along those lines, I figured that if I made some lovely savoury lamb mince and topped it with boulangere-style potatoes, it might work.  I'll let you know - but I can tell you that just the idea of it is making my tummy rumble, right now!

So that brings us to Monday, when hubby is back in charge in the kitchen and has decided to be brave and definitely try the ole filled pasta.  He's not had a very good time with filled pasta in the past, but on my recommendation (I sometimes have some for lunch) on the basis that as time has gone by the quality has improved, said he would give it a go.

This was on a menu plan previously, but he swerved it by enticing me with a Chinese Takeaway - always a good avoidance technique - so we'll see whether we make it this time!  I'm quite looking forward to it, even if it is shop bought.  Hey - it'll give me a night off - and after three nights of cooking, that will be very welcome.

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Nasi Goreng - the power of a food memory.

Some twenty five years ago, my then boyfriend and I went to a baby's christening.  The baby's parents, Michael & Vida (they ran the Singapura Restaurant in Fulham), hailed from China and Singapore respectively and this was no ordinary christening.  Regrettably, owing to one of my horses being poorly at the time and requiring veterinary intervention, we missed a large part of the Christening itself but managed to get back in time for the reception afterwards.
 
This was a very good thing, as Vida's Mum was in the kitchen of the hired Hall, making Nasi Goreng (amongst other things) for all the guests.  Huge platters kept appearing, with piles of steaming rice, chicken and prawns on board - which tasted divine.

Now, I knew I liked Nasi Goreng, as because my father was in the Royal Engineers we had lived abroad quite a bit during my childhood.  I was born in Malaysia and we spent intervals in Germany.  I'm not sure about experiencing Nasi Goreng as a baby in Malaysia (I doubt it, somehow!), but my parents (or my Dad, to be specific) obviously enjoyed it because I recall that when we were in Germany, we would often buy a big tin of Nasi Goreng from the Naafi.  I can very definitely remember eating that and liking it a lot.

That flavour - of Nasi Goreng (or Fried Rice) - has stayed with me down the years.

I can remember getting very excited some years ago when Sainsbury's started stocking small packs of Nasi Goreng seasoning, which contained instructions on making Nasi Goreng.  I tried it out, but the flavour wasn't quite how I remembered Vida's Mum's Nasi Goreng tasting, so it wasn't quite right.

Since then, I've tried a recipe from the BBC Good Food website - and it's the first recipe that's ever let me down in a big way, as it was not only horrible, but didn't taste in the slightest bit right.

That has to have been some three or four years ago.

So there I was, on Monday evening, trying to think of something relatively easy that I could make on Tuesday evening (following a busy day).  I've described how, at moments like this, I examine how I'm feeling and what I would really like to eat - and there, out of the gloom, came the answer "Nasi Goreng".  As ever, my mouth watered at the very idea.

It occurred to me that I had some chicken left from the weekend's roast, which if I added a bag of prawns to, would do fine.  Next, I needed an authentic recipe so turned to the internet.  There are plenty of recipes out there, but everything is slightly different, but intrinsically the same.  Having read them all, I decided that none of them were right but the thought had occurred to me that maybe I'd be better off following my memory of the flavours.  After all, I knew what I didn't want - a very highly flavoured, saucy, mixture - and I knew the flavours I did want - heat, sweetness, savouriness, but in a dry rice mix.  I had some Mirrin (sweet Japanese rice wine) in the cupboard, along with Soy sauce and Fish sauce.  I had chicken and could get prawns.  I could get some spring onions, I had ginger and coriander .... the thought had formulated into a plan.

The recipe is below and if this isn't Nasi Goreng, then Vida's Mum must have been making something else!

24.05.2013 : I've cooked this Nasi Goreng recipe a number of times since the first go - but this time of trying made me realise how much better I am getting, at handling a blisteringly hot wok.  I very definitely cooked this attempt far more proficiently - which basically means far quicker - than ever before and it showed.  The flavours were beautifully balanced, the chicken didn't dominate and the prawns were still pinkly munchy.  Having been given the idea by my Facebook friend Viv Braznell, I put a few fresh lime wedges on the side, as they do in Thailand.  It was a bit of a departure from the Chinese/Singpore tradition, but is a wonderful addition - so thanks, Viv!  Good gracious, but I love this dish!

NASI GORENG (FRIED RICE) (feeds 2-3)         NEW IMPROVED RECIPE!

Ingredients :

2-300g Basmati rice, cooked and cooled
2 eggs, lightly whipped
salt & pepper
3 individual knobs of butter
1 tbsp rapeseed or vegetable oil
2 skinless, boneless chicken breasts, cut thinly on the diagonal
a bunch (6 or 7) of spring onions , cleaned and chopped
a medium hot red chilli, stalk removed and chopped - seeds are optional
2 fat cloves of garlic, grated
2 thumb-sized pieces of ginger, grated
4 chestnut mushrooms, cleaned and sliced
a handful of frozen peas
fresh coriander, chopped, to taste
3 heaped tsp of red Thai curry paste
3 tbsp dark soy sauce
2 tbsp fish sauce
1-2 tbsp mirrin (Japanese Rice Wine)
300g cooked and peeled prawns, drained but not rinsed.

Method :

1.  Cook the basmati rice according to the instructions on the packet, but stop the cooking a fraction before it is done, leaving a slight bite in the rice.  Drain it well and spread it out onto a plate (or two) to cool.  Fork the rice over from time to time to keep it fluffy.  Don't use a spoon, as this will encourage the grains to break and clump together.

2.  Empty the prawns into a colander and leave to drain.

3.  Using a deep frying pan or wok, melt one of the knobs of butter and add half the seasoned egg mixture.  Roll the pan to spread the egg out thinly and cook to form a thin omelette, then reserve to keep warm whilst you cook a second omelette.  Reserve to keep warm, on top of the first.

4.  Melt the butter with the oil until really quite hot and add the chicken.  Fry until the chicken is almost cooked through and has gained some golden colour.

5.  Add the spring onions and chilli.  Stir and fry until softened - around 4-5 mins or so.

6.  Add the ginger and garlic and continue to stir and fry for another 1-2 minutes, taking care not to let it stick to the bottom of the pan.  Add the mushrooms and continue to fry until the mushrooms have gained some colour and softened a little.

7.  Add the Thai curry paste.  Stir well and cook for some 4-5 mins.

8.  Add the soy sauce, fish sauce and mirrin and reduce the heat to prevent it burning.  Continue to cook until a sticky and thick consistency has been achieved.

9.  Add the frozen peas and stir until they have defrosted and softened slightly.

10.  Add the rice and toss regularly to prevent it sticking. 

11.  Add the prawns and stir to combine.  You'll need to increase the heat slightly to make sure that the rice and prawns heat through properly.

12.  Take the two omelettes, roll and cut into strips.  Once everything is heated through and piping hot, add the coriander and omelette strips and stir through.

Serve at once.

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