San Diego Eats: Make & Makan's Nasi Lemak
As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic cancelling a lot of public events like food fairs, organizations have had to adapt. One way the SingMa (Singapore Malaysia) Club of San Diego has adapted is to organize what they call “SingMa Club Foodiegrams!” They’ve enrolled their vendors who normally participate in their Hawkers Fair to sell through this program, where they email out a list of vendors to their subscribers, and you prepay what you want (usually through Venmo). And then on an appointed time and day, you show up to collect your purchase.
Today, three sellers from the SingMa Club Foodiegram were slotted to distribute at the Mira Mesa High School parking lot. This was actually our fourth time here. The first three times were to pick up dumplings from a maker based in Orange County, and the first time we went, there was another seller with a super long distribution line in another part of the parking lot. Mira Mesa High is quite the hub of mobile food distributors!
Our haul this time were two servings of Nasi Lemak from the vendor Make & Makan. Nasi Lemak is Malaysia’s national dish, and it’s comprised of rice cooked in coconut milk, fried ikan bilis which are these tiny fried fish, fried peanuts, sambal chili paste, sliced cucumber, and hard boiled egg. They served this with otak-otak, which is this grilled fish paste wrapped in banana leaf. They say that you can’t find this anywhere else in San Diego!
Come dinner time, my mom steamed the rice and otak-otak to reheat them. They actually told us to just reheat the otak-otak in the microwave, but our microwave is broken, and honestly steaming is such a wonderful way to reheat food. The rice came out evenly warm and fluffy, and the otak-otak was still moist.
I read that the Malaysian version of otak-otak is grilled, hence the singed part of the leaves, while in Indonesia it might be steamed. It was really delicious! It had some kind of chew to it, maybe from lemongrass? It had a pleasant fish flavor combined with spices.
The fried peanuts and little fish were really delightful. They gave such a nice flavor and crunch from the peanuts and crispiness from the fish.
Their homemade sambal was surprisingly mild and a bit sweet. I mixed it all into the rice, and especially added it to the eggs for more flavor.
Just like yesterday’s Peruvian food adventure, this was an exciting taste of travel while staying at home. I’m so glad these vendors can continue to make people happy with their food during the pandemic, and I’m also thankful that San Diego has such a nice diversity of food options, that are easily accessible without a long drive.
