Nasi Katok

Brunei's dollar meal: a mound of rice, a piece of fried chicken and a spoonful of sambal, wrapped in brown paper and sold through a window all night

Origin: Bandar Seri Begawan & Brunei

From the journey of Rice.

The name is a small piece of social history. Katok means to knock, and the story generally told in Brunei is that the earliest sellers worked out of houses with the shutters down, so a customer knocked and a parcel came back through the window. Whether or not that is literally the origin, the shape of the thing is right: nasi katok is sold from hatches and shophouse counters, often late into the night, and it is handed over in brown paper rather than on a plate. The composition has not changed and is not supposed to. Rice, fried chicken, sambal. Nothing else is required and for a long time nothing else was offered. It was famously priced at one Brunei dollar for decades, which made it the default meal of students, taxi drivers, and anyone finishing a shift, and the slow drift of that price upwards has been reported in the Bruneian press with the seriousness other countries reserve for fuel duty. The sambal is what people actually choose between. Every seller has their own, and a Bruneian will travel across Bandar Seri Begawan for a particular one; the standard is a fried sambal tumis of dried chillies, shallot, garlic, and belacan cooked down in oil until it darkens and the oil separates, sweetened a little with tamarind and sugar. Reputations are built on it and lost on it. Brunei's cooking sits inside the wider Malay world of northern Borneo and shares almost everything with it, so the interest of nasi katok is not that its components are unusual but that the format is: a fixed three-part parcel, sold at a fixed price, that became a national institution by being the cheapest hot food in the country.

Ingredients

Rice

400 g long-grain rice, rinsed
650 ml water
1 tsp salt

Chicken

4 chicken thighs, bone in and skin on
1 tbsp ground turmeric
1 tbsp ground coriander
4 garlic cloves, crushed
1.5 tsp salt
1 litre oil, for frying

Sambal

20 dried red chillies, soaked 20 minutes and drained
10 shallots
6 garlic cloves
2 tsp belacan (shrimp paste), toasted
150 ml oil
2 tbsp tamarind pulp
2 tbsp palm sugar
1 tsp salt, or to taste

Method

Rub the chicken with the turmeric, coriander, garlic, and salt and leave it for at least an hour, or overnight.
Make the sambal first, since it improves standing. Blitz the soaked chillies, shallots, garlic, and toasted belacan to a coarse paste.
Fry the paste in the 150ml of oil over a medium heat, stirring often, for twenty to twenty-five minutes.
Keep going until the paste darkens from bright red to deep brick and the oil separates and rises in a clear layer. That separation is the whole test of a sambal tumis, and stopping short leaves it raw and sharp.
Stir in the tamarind, palm sugar, and salt and cook for five minutes more. Taste: it should be hot, salty, sour, and faintly sweet in that order.
Cook the rice with the water and salt by the absorption method, then leave it covered off the heat for ten minutes and fork it through.
Heat the frying oil to 170°C. Pat the chicken dry, since wet marinade spits and steams.
Fry the thighs for twelve to fifteen minutes, turning once, until deep golden and cooked through to the bone.
Raise the heat for the last minute to crisp the skin, then drain on a rack rather than paper so it stays crisp.
Serve each portion as a mound of rice with a piece of chicken beside it and a generous spoonful of sambal on top, in brown paper if you want to do it properly.

Notes

The sambal is the dish and the twenty-five minutes of frying is not negotiable: the paste must darken and the oil must separate, or it tastes raw. Make it in quantity, since it keeps for weeks in the refrigerator under a film of its own oil and improves for the first few days. Toast the belacan first, wrapped in foil in a dry pan, which takes off the raw ammoniac edge. Drain the fried chicken on a rack. Twenty dried chillies makes a genuinely Bruneian heat; halve it and add more later if you are unsure.

The Gastrographer

Name: Nasi Katok
Prep time: 20 min
Cook time: 45 min
Total time: 1 h 30 min
Yield: 4
Cuisine: Bandar Seri Begawan & Brunei
Ingredients: 400 g long-grain rice, rinsed; 650 ml water; 1 tsp salt; 4 chicken thighs, bone in and skin on; 1 tbsp ground turmeric; 1 tbsp ground coriander; 4 garlic cloves, crushed; 1.5 tsp salt; 1 litre oil, for frying; 20 dried red chillies, soaked 20 minutes and drained; 10 shallots; 6 garlic cloves; 2 tsp belacan (shrimp paste), toasted; 150 ml oil; 2 tbsp tamarind pulp; 2 tbsp palm sugar; 1 tsp salt, or to taste

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Journey Point Map Key

Ingredient originTrade or transit route

Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control