“Nasi Legundi” – Traditional Recipe to Stay Young

Awet muda is what we call it. There are variations in the representation of the word. Some say it as “lengundi”, some refer to it as “legundi”, another would say it as “lagundi”, and another version would address it as “lemuni”. Since there are so many versions, let us maintain “lemuni” throughout the post. ‘Lemuni” is derived from the leaves of the lemuni or legundi tree. It is a herbal plant that has been popularly used in the Malay culture for its health remedies and other medicinal attributes.

Nasi Lemuni.

The lemuni shrub comes in two variants. The one that we commonly use (for the purpose of making this Nasi Lemuni) is the dark purple color leaf, or what we refer to as “lemuni hitam” (black lemuni). The process and ingredients to make it is pretty simple. Much like making Nasi Lemak given the accompanying spicy fried anchovies (sambal tumis ikan bilis), hard-boiled egg, and cucumber.

This recipe is only for preparing the rice. Enjoy the Nasi Lemuni along with sambal tumis ikan bilis, or any other sambal variants, petai, hard-boiled egg, and cucumber. 

Ingredients

• Rice grain 
• Lemuni leaves – take a few, there’s actually no exact amount
• Screwpine leaves (daun pandan) – tied into a knot
• Coconut milk (santan) – 200 ml 
• Red onions – 3, sliced
• Cloves (bunga cengkih) – 3
• Garlic – 5 cloves, sliced
• Ginger – about an inch, sliced
• Salt – to taste
• Fenugreek (halba) – half teaspoon
• Jintan manis (fennel seed)
• Star Anise (bunga lawang) – 3
• Cinnamon (kulit kayu manis) – 3

How to Make

1. In a rice cooker pot, prepare the grain of rice. Wash them and drain out the water.
2. Take the lemuni leaves. Separate the leaves from the stems. Take only the leaves and put them all inside a blender with a glass of water. Then, blend the leaves until they become really fine (granularly really small).
3. Next, filter out the leaves and keep the filtered water. Pour in the filtered water into the rice cooker pot. Stir well.
4. Put in the screwpine leaves, garlic, ginger, sliced red onions, cloves, fenugreek, fennel seeds, bunga lawang, cinnamon, and salt into the rice cooker pot. Stir well.
5. Pour in the coconut milk into the rice cooker pot. Stir well and ensure that there is no clump.
6. Place the pot into the rice cooker and start the cooker.
7. Once cooked, serve the Nasi Lemuni with any variants of sambal along with hard-boiled egg, and slices of cucumber!

Here’s a video recipe by Jom Masak on how to prepare Nasi Lemuni with sambal tumis telur puyuh (quail eggs):