Jade Sticky Rice – The Christmas Version

(4 – 6 Servings)

Sticky Rice Layer

Ingredients

Preparation Method

• Before cooking sticky rice, it must first be washed. Rinse the rice in a strainer until the water is clear. Traditional wisdom in Thailand is that it takes three washings to properly clean the dust off the rice.
• Here’s the tricky part: the rice must be soaked overnight (in other words, about eight hours or more) before cooking.
• Next, sticky rice must be steamed, not boiled, so you cannot use a traditional rice cooker unless it has a strainer to keep the water separated from the rice. You also get the best results if the rice is a uniform depth when cooking. I’ve gotten my best results using a round cake pan with a mesh bottom placed in a vegetable steamer. The pan allows the rice to be smoothed to an even depth, while the mesh bottom allows the steam through without letting the rice fall out. Steam the rice about 20 minutes.
• While the rice is cooking, stir together the sugar, coconut cream, pandan flavoring and food coloring. Use just enough coloring to give the mixture a light creamy green color. It helps dissolve the sugar if you warm the coconut cream for 20 to 30 seconds in the microwave before stirring in the sugar.
• As soon as the rice is cooked, transfer it to a large bowl and pour the sweet coconut cream over it. Stir it to mix and let it set. If you seem to have too much liquid, strain the mixture to remove the excess.
• Once the mixture has cooled slightly, you can transfer it to a pan or individual serving dishes. Keep it in the refrigerator to make it firm.

Coconut Cream Topping

Ingredients

Preparation Method

• To create the coconut cream second layer, mix together the coconut milk, rice flour and salt in a pan. Heat to boiling over medium flame, stirring until it thickens. Remove from heat and spoon onto the top of the first layer.
• Store in the refrigerator.

Serving note: If you refrigerate this dessert – which you will want to do if you’ve made it well ahead of time – be sure to take it out well enough ahead of time to be served at room temperature. The dish doesn’t taste very good cold, and needs to be room temperature or warmer.

Jasmine Pudding, served in a Martini glass; definitely not dry!

If I had to pick just one Thai sweet as my favorite, it would have to be this apparently simple recipe for a two layered sweet. The bottom layer consists of a nearly clear gelatin-like substance that typically has bits of something crunchy in it. The traditional crunchy bit is provided by water chestnuts, but you can use lotus seeds, sweet corn, steamed peanuts or even chunks of mature coconut. You can also try bits of fresh fruit, such as lichee, longan or mango.

The top layer is another sort of pudding made with just coconut milk and rice flour. It has an opaque snow white appearance, which might make it a quite appropriate sweet for the winter holidays. Since the top layer hides whatever is in the first layer, it makes these sweets something of an adventure. Most stalls that produce these sweets with several different bits of fruits or nuts in the first layer will place a bit of the fruit on top of the coconut layer.

You probably don’t have access to a pandan bush to source the raw materials for the boxes, and you may not wish to spend the time making the number of boxes that this recipe will fill. In that case, try to find some small foil cups for muffins or petite fours. Another possibility is to use something like a Martini glass, which makes a more elegant serving container.

Some additional ingredient notes: Corn flour is a perfectly acceptable substitute for tapioca flour. The two serve exactly the same purpose and have almost the same taste (which is pretty much none). There is no substitute for the rice flour. See the recipe for jasmine water to find out how to make it, as well as what to do if your jasmine bush isn’t in bloom. If you can’t find pandan juice, or extract, I suggest you just leave it out. I prefer the color of the dish without it. I’ve seen any number of descriptions of how to get coconut cream out of coconut milk, but frankly, the canned stuff works the best and tastes great.

(6 Servings)

Jasmine Pudding

Ingredients

Preparation Method

• To create the first layer, bring the sugar and plain water to a boil and cook until the sugar is dissolved, then reduce heat.
• Stir together the 40 grams of rice flour and tapioca flour. Mix in the jasmine water and pandan juice bit by bit. Pour slowly into the sugar mixture. Add in the water chestnuts and stir to mix through. Quickly pour the mixture into the leaf boxes, or whatever you are using to serve the dessert. You have to work fast, since this mixture will gel quite quickly.

Coconut Cream Topping

Ingredients

Preparation Method

• To create the coconut cream second layer, mix together the coconut milk, rice flour and salt in a pan. Heat to boiling over medium flame, stirring until it thickens. Remove from heat and spoon onto the top of the first layer, filling the leaf boxes, or whatever.

Serving note: If you refrigerate this dessert – which you will want to do if you’ve made it well ahead of time – be sure to take it out well enough ahead of time to be served at room temperature. The dish doesn’t taste very good cold, and needs to be room temperature or warmer to allow the jasmine fragrance to come out.

Pandan leaves on sale in Chiang Mai’s fresh market.

The fragrance of the leaves is so strong that they have traditionally been used as an air freshener. Even today, it is not unusual to see a few bunches of leaves laid on the ledge behind the rear seat of cars, especially taxis. The aroma released by the leaves when heated by the sun through the rear window keeps the interior of the car smelling sweet. In the heavy traffic of Bangkok, you will sometimes see people selling bunches of pandan leaves "car-to-car" at busy intersections. In the much more laid back Chiang Mai, people will buy bunches of pandan leaves at the markets. A stalk of the nearly meter-long leaves will cost just a few U.S. cents.

The leaves are also used to make small boxes which are filled with sweets. A syrupy juice extracted from the leaves is used to flavor cakes and other sweets. Pandan juice has a very buttery aroma and taste, which can be a bit surprising given its green color.