Tomato Rice 番茄饭

I’ve been thinking of tomato rice lately. Back in university days, my friends and I used to dine in at a stall near the hostel. A Malay uncle was selling nasi tomato (tomato rice) there. His tomato rice was served with a chicken drumstick and few slices of cucumber. It was the only tomato rice I tried.

One day, while chatting with a Malay friend on a cooking topic, I brought up a question to her on how to cook tomato rice. She taught me on the steps and ingredients, I memorized it, shopped for ingredients that evening, and cooked it on the next day. My friend’s recipe calls for evaporated milk and coconut milk, but I substituted it with creamer powder instead. The outcome? I got very fragrant and moist tomato rice to serve with air-fried chicken chop, vegetarian mutton curry and Japanese cucumber slices. It’s delicious!

Tomato Rice

Serves 4-5

Ingredients:

2 cups of rice, rinsed
2 cup of water (add a little bit more if your rice tends to absorb more water)
60g tomato puree
1 tomato, peeled and cubed
1 thumb-sized ginger, skinned and bruised
1 Cinnamon stick
1 star anise
4 pandan leaves, tied in 2 knots
Salt to taste
2 tbsp of creamer powder
Cooking oil

(A)

Blend together:

1 onion, peeled and diced
4 shallots, peeled
5 cloves of garlic, peeled

Steps:

1.Heat up oil in a wok. Add ginger, star anise, Cinnamon stick and (A) and sauté till fragrant. Add tomato puree and fresh tomato cubes. Stir-fry for a while.
2.Pour in rinsed rice. Stir to mix well.
3.Pour in water and bring to a boil.
4.Transer it to the rice cooker pot. Add salt, creamer powder and pandan leaves. Cook in rice cooker. Remark: I cook in under white rice program for 15 minute by using microcomputer rice cooker.
5.Once done, keep it warm in the rice cooker for another 10 minutes before serving.