Malay Malaysian

Malay cuisine is the indigenous Muslim majority cooking of Malaysia — built on rice, coconut milk, lemongrass, and chili-shrimp paste sambal. Nasi lemak — rice cooked in coconut milk, served with sambal, fried anchovies, peanuts, hard-boiled egg, cucumber — is the national breakfast (and often eaten any time of day). Satay are skewers of marinated meat grilled over charcoal, served with thick peanut-sambal sauce, rice cakes, and cucumber-onion. Rendang is the dry-curried beef (more Indonesian in origin but adopted nationally). Cendol is the shaved-ice dessert with coconut milk, palm sugar syrup, and green pandan-jelly worms. Asam pedas is the sour-spicy fish curry. The cuisine is halal, rice-and-coconut anchored, and the Malaysian foundation under all the multicultural overlay.