Nasi Ulam (Malaysian Herb Rice Salad)

I'm an Asian and I can pretty much eat rice in just about every meal of the day including the little snacks in between each meal. I'm not very fond of leftover rice though and I get bored just throwing it in the microwave and reheating it for the next meal. If I can get tocino, tapa or longganisa I wouldn't have a problem with leftover rice because chances are it will end up as a tasty longsilog, tocilog or tapsilog. Back in the day, there was a craze about anything silog in the Philippines. Silog is basically sinangag or fried rice with log from itlog which is egg in Tagalog, fried sunny side up then paired with either tocino (cured pork), longganisa (sausage) or tapa (cured beef). Well, I can't get a hold of any of these yummy Filipino breakfast delicacies, can't seem to drag myself to the Filipino store because I always end up buying a bunch of stuff I really shouldn't eat, chicharon is a good example.

Anyway, there's leftover rice waiting for me in the fridge and I was feeling hungry. When I get hungry, I think about rice right away (must be the Asian in me). Can't eat it just like that so I thought I should do something with it. I pulled out a couple of my cookbooks trying to get some ideas but I didn't want to go through all that trouble. I found a real interesting recipe though from "Authentic Recipes from Malaysia" called Nasi Ulam which is an herbal rice salad. I would really love to make it one of these days but not today, I simply didn't have the patience for it. I did take the idea from it though and here's what I came up with.

2 - 3 cups of leftover rice, reheated

1 cup of chopped fresh herbs ( I used mint, dill, scallions, lemon grass and Thai basil)

1 deseeded jalapeno pepper (I just happen to have it, you can use something else I'm sure)

juice & zest of 1 lemon

2 tbsp of olive oil

salt and freshly ground black pepper

a pinch of red pepper flakes

a tiny pinch of dried oregano

First I placed the rice in a big enough plate, you can use a salad bowl if you want. I combined the olive oil, lemon juice, lemon zest, salt, pepper, lemon grass (just the soft fragrant core) in a small bowl and whisked them together to make the dressing. I poured the dressing into the plate of rice, added the chopped herbs and tossed everything together. I didn't serve it with anything else, but I'm sure this salad would be great with poached salmon or grilled prawns even grilled chicken.