Nasi Kunyit and Chicken Curry

In Penang where I grew up, it's a norm to receive a food package from baby's 1st month celebration that is usually consist of nasi kunyit (turmeric rice), chicken curry, ang ku kueh, and two hard-boiled eggs dyed in red color. The items from the package that I enjoyed the most was nasi kunyit with chicken curry, I find the combination of the fragrant rice with curry is so irresistible that it was the first item that I usually "attacked" from the food package.

After staying in Singapore for many years and nobody here give such a food package, I've completely forgotten about it, until I saw Boo's post, in November last year. I've been thinking about cooking my own nasi kunyit ever since.

Last Saturday, I've finally tried out a recipe from Cecilia Tan's Penang Nyonya Cooking, which is similar to the one found in Kuali. Unfortunately, this is my first time cooking with glutinous rice and even though I've tried to follow as closely to the recipe as possible, the rice still turned out to be too soggy. I guess it was due to too much coconut milk. If I tell my mom about this, she'd surely laugh her head off, that her silly daughter had to cook rice by referring to recipe and still couldn't get it right!


Ms Cecilia Tan mentioned at the last part of the recipe that the nasi kunyit is to be served with "Gulai Nasi Kunyit" (Curry for Turmeric Rice). I find it very interesting, as I do not remember that the chicken curry that came with nasi kunyit was in any way different from other versions. So I compare the ingredients of this particular recipe with another chicken curry recipe found in the same book. The only difference I can spot is that star anise, cloves and cinnamon sticks are missing from the ingredients for chicken curry, and the curry for turmeric rice recipe does not call for potatoes. Wanting to find out more, I've done some searching in several websites, see this, this, this and a few more recipes from this. Actually, after browsing through all of the recipes... I'm getting confused. Haha!

Anyway, I LOVE this version of chicken curry. It's so full of flavor, I guess it's because of the spices like coriander seed, star anise, clove and cinnamon sticks. I'm so satisfied with the result that I'm going to cook it again this weekend!


As usual, drop me a mail if you're interested in having the recipe.