‘Nasi Lemak’ granola gives a taste of Malaysia while being healthier
KUALA LUMPUR: One day in April last year, Theresa Lam woke up and wanted nasi lemak, the de facto national dish of Malaysia, for breakfast.
The only problem was that the 52-year-old public relations consultant was on a diet – specifically a low-carb diet where one consumes fewer carbohydrates than recommended. It is a popular form of dieting to manage weight and control blood sugar.
“I was craving nasi lemak but I didn’t want the nasi (rice),” she told Bernama at her apartment in Sri Damansara here.
Originally from Hong Kong, the Malaysian permanent resident has already cottoned to nasi lemak as the breakfast of choice like any Malaysian. But the amount of fat and carbs in the dish is high – the rice in nasi lemak is full of saturated fat, thanks to its coconut milk base – and it is served with a spicy and sweet sambal, cucumber slices, fried anchovies and peanuts, and a hard-boiled egg, all wrapped in a banana leaf.
Nasi lemak is very popular despite its reputation as one of the richest and unhealthiest breakfast options in Malaysia. Little surprise that the country has one of the highest rates of obesity and diabetes in Southeast Asia.
Stopping her diet was a nonstarter. So Lam resigned herself to eating her usual healthy and fibre-rich breakfast of granola, which consists of rolled oats, nuts, seeds and honey or a sweetener, with Greek yogurt. But the craving became an itch that just wouldn’t go away.
Finally, she asked her friend and cooking enthusiast Vivien Chin if she could make granola that tasted like nasi lemak.
“I said ‘Crazy, man. Cannot la’,” piped in Chin, laughing. But then the 60-year-old thought about it further and decided to try adapting her family’s nasi lemak sambal recipe to granola-making.
Because “(t)he soul of the nasi lemak is actually the sambal, right?” added Lam.
The result was nasi lemak granola, which almost everyone Bernama talked to agreed tasted like nasi lemak.
The granola includes crispy fried anchovies and peanuts and smells like coconut and pandan.
Friends and family enthusiastically bought the granola and came back for more. In July, Lam and Chin launched a company called Gila Goodness to make and sell these granola bars and brought on Lam’s husband and three others as partners.
They introduced other flavours along the way: tom yum (a sour and spicy soup) and ondeh-ondeh (a local dessert).
To their small circle of friends and family, Lam and Chin have shown that it may be possible to ‘have your nasi lemak and eat it too’.
By the new year (2024), they had widened that circle of customers to thousands via word of mouth, direct sales at holiday bazaars and online platforms.
Now they hope to widen their clientele, targeting the curious, the health-conscious as well as Malaysians living overseas, by introducing a new flavour, pineapple tart (a local fruit pastry), for the Chinese New Year and Hari Raya celebrations.