Our next topic of foods that I ate (and can be found in abundance) in Singapore and Malaysia is: Indian food. Having frequently visited this area of the world for my grandparents, I was exposed to Indian food at a young age. Curries are one of my favorite dishes as long as they don’t take the roof off my mouth. Indian curries though, vary quite a bit. I believe that southern Indian curries have a bit more spice and kick. In addition, they are much more pungent than Malaysian curries and are definitely more flavorful than Thai curries. They do not tend to have as much coconut milk compared to Malaysian and Thai curries as well. However, I shall leave the discussion on curries for another post. Onward!
I’ve had plenty of chicken biryani before. But this one, nasi biryani, was not only enormous in amount, it was cheap. In addition, this is local to Singaporean / Malaysian food as it is a fusion of Malay and Indian cuisine. For a large paper packet (think a pyramid with a 6″ x 6″ square base and a height of approximately 10″), $6 SGD is freaking cheap. We got to choose between mutton or chicken. Personally, I like mutton a lot better. The chicken tends to be a little drier, whereas the mutton tends to soak up the sauce into the meat. The flavor in this nasi biryani was great: they didn’t skimp out on the spices at all! Best place to get this is at an Indian stall at a Kopitiam (hawker center converted to indoor eating cafeteria).
nasi biryani
In Malaysia, my aunt and uncle took me to a specific roti place near their house. They live in the suburbs which is the best place (in my opinion) to really get good local food. Roti prata is a Malaysian / Singaporean version of well…Indian bread. I want to say it’s south Indian but I could be mistaken here. You can get various versions of “roti”. My favorite happens to be roti telur or roti with egg. They even have cheese roti, roti tissue (super thin roti and happens to be sweet with sugar inside), and even a roti bomb. Our bomb ended up to be a regular roti that had deflated sadly. Each piece of roti is served with a side dish of curry as a dipping sauce.
roti prata
roti telur
The other dish that I have to have when I go back to Malaysia is nasi lemak. Nasi lemak is supposedly the national dish of Malaysia, and more information can be found at the link above from Wikipedia. You can find it here and there in Singapore, but it is best in Malaysia. Served with sliced egg, cucumber, and anchovies fried with a spicy sambal (dried prawns) paste, this dish truly fills your mouth up with all kinds of flavors, especially when they all mix together with the coconut rice!
nasi lemak
I wish I had more time to go back for more nasi biryani. It truly was quite savory, but having so much to eat still in these two countries left me with one hand tied behind my back. Getting sick restricted me even more by tying the other one! Thanks for stopping by, and I hope you find these posts enticing and interesting!
R/g
Rammiegirl 2.0 