After a long day out at work or school, it is important to have a little meal before bed. You can try cooking easy dinner meal preps from Malaysia if you don’t prefer to have a takeout, or just want to eat lightly. There are a few recipes that you can make yourself at home, but first, here is why dinner is important for you.

The Importance of Dinner

Dinner is also important because after doing your daily activity after lunch, you may want to fuel up and remain energised until it is time to sleep. Of course, you shouldn’t eat a heavy meal at night, otherwise you will slow down and your digestive system may run into some trouble while you sleep.
Plus, eating lightly allows you to still maintain a healthy body. Below are four light dinner recipes you can try: grilled corn cobs, crispy mushrooms, fried rice and nasi lemak, a local favourite.

• Grilled Corn Cobs

An easy cooking tip for beginners is making grilled corn. The gist is that you just get a grill pan and grill your corn cobs with it, then you munch away. Before you get to grilling, you must ensure that the ears of corn you are buying are of good quality.
Though you could slightly peel back the husks to peek at the kernels, you wouldn’t exactly want to do that to every corn in the supermarket. Instead, look for corn that is wrapped in tight, green husks and tassels that are golden brown and slightly sticky. If you found such in the market, you are looking at fresher, sweeter corn.

Ingredients:

• (Any number) ears of corn

• Butter for serving

• Salt for seasoning

How To Prepare:

1. Preheat your grill pan to a high temperature.

2. Add your corn and turn them as you cook until they are charred all over for around 10 minutes.

3. Spread butter over your cooked corn and season with salt.

• Crispy Mushrooms

Want to have a meal of mushrooms for the night? Crispy roasted mushrooms is the recipe that you can cook. Besides the usual button mushrooms, you can also mix with whatever mushrooms that you bought too, such as shiitake, oyster, cremini, and so on.

Ingredients:

• 1 pound of roughly chopped mixed mushrooms (shiitake, oyster, cremini, etc)

• 1 pound of buttons mushrooms, halved or quartered if large

• ½ cup olive oil

• 6 fresh thyme sprigs

• Salt and pepper

How To Prepare:

1. Preheat your oven to 450 Fahrenheit. Put your mushrooms, oil, and thyme on at least two baking sheets. Season with ½ of a teaspoon of salt and one teaspoon of pepper.

2. Roast in the oven for 30 to 35 minutes, tossing once, until they are golden brown and crispy. Garnish with thyme if you want, and serve warm. Gobble up.

• Fried Rice

Fried Rice is another one of the easy food prepping ideas from Malaysia that you can cook up for dinner. Rice, some vegetables and eggs are all that you need. There are a variety of fried rice recipes, but if you are just looking to eat without any flair, follow this recipe and cook with a wok.

Ingredients:

• ⅔ cup chopped baby carrots

• ½ cup frozen green peas

• 2 tablespoons vegetable oils

• 1 clove garlic, minced or to taste

• 2 large eggs

• 3 cups cooked white rice

• 1 tablespoon soy sauce

• 2 teaspoons sesame oil

How To Prepare:

1. Put the carrots in a saucepan and cover with water. Boil them in a low temperature for three to five minutes. Stir in peas, then drain in a colander.

2. With your work heated in high temperature, pour in vegetable oil, then cook the peas, garlic and carrots for 30 seconds. Then add in your eggs, which you scramble with vegetables.

3. Finally, stir in cooked rice, then add soy sauce to coat your rice with. Drizzle with sesame oil and toss again. Serve.

• Nasi Lemak

Nasi lemak is a Malaysian coconut milk rice that is primarily served with sambal, fried anchovies, toasted peanuts, cucumber and sometimes boiled egg. You could exclude any of them if you wish, but you will miss the full, authentic nasi lemak experience.

Ingredients:

For coconut milk steamed rice:

• 2 cups rice

• 3 screwpine leaves, tied in a knot

• Salt

• 1 can of coconut milk (5.6 oz or 150 - 180 ml)

• Water

For tamarind juice:

• 1 cup water

• Tamarind pulp, about the size of a small ping pong ball

For sambal ikan bilis (dried anchovies sambal)

• ½ red onion

• 1 cup ikan bilis (dried anchovies)

• A clove of garlic

• 4 shallots

• 10 dried chillies

• 1 teaspoon of belacan (shrimp paste)

• ¼ teaspoon of salt

• 1 teaspoon of sugar

Miscellaneous ingredients

• 2 hard boiled eggs, halved

• 3 small fish, sardines or smelt fish

• 1 small cucumber, cut into slices

How to Prepare:

1. Similar to making steamed rice, rinse your rice and drain. Add in the coconut milk, a pinch of salt and some water. Then add the pandan leaves and cook your rice.

2. Rinse the dried anchovies, drain the water, then fry them until they are light brown.

3. Together with the shallots, garlic and deseeded dried chillies, pound the prawn paste with a mortar and pestle, or grind with a food processor. Slice the red onions into rings. Soak the tamarind pulp into water for 15 minutes, then squeeze it to extract the flavour. Drain the pulp to extract the juice.

4. Fry the spice paste in a heated, oiled pan until fragrant, add in the onion rings, ikan bilis, tamarind juice, salt and sugar. Shimmer on low heat until the gravy thickens.

5. Clean and cut the small fish in half, then season with salt before deep frying them. For the cucumbers, just slice them and, if you want, quarter them into four pieces. Now dish up your coconut rice and top it up with the sambal ikan bilis. Serve with fried fish, cucumber slices and hard boiled eggs.