Mangoes with Sticky Rice

This has to be one of the desserts many people identify most with Thailand, at least if the visit at a certain time of year, when mangoes are in season. It's quite a filling dish; one worth of being shared with a friend. It can also be quite sleep-inducing!

Mangoes and Sticky Rice

Ingredients

Servings: 4

Preparation

1. 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.
2. Here's the tricky part: the rice must be soaked overnight (in other words, about eight hours or more) before cooking.
3. 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.
4. While the rice is cooking, stir together ½ cup sugar and 1 cup coconut cream. It helps dissolve the sugar if you warm the coconut cream for 20 to 30 seconds in the microwave before stirring in the sugar.
5. 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.
6. I think this dish is best when the rice is still just a little bit warm.
7. For the coconut cream topping, heat the remaining 1 cup of coconut cream over low heat, then stir in the rice flour and salt. Keep stirring until the mixture begins to thicken, then stir in the sugar. Remove from heat as soon as the sugar is dissolved.
8. Now, to put it all together, you'll need the rice and topping plus two ripe mangoes and (optionally) some puffed yellow mung beans (these have a taste and texture like puffed rice, which you could probably use in a pinch).
9. Peel the mangoes then cut the meat lengthwise off either side of the large central pit. Further cut the mango into bit-sized pieces and arrange on a plate.
10. Spoon some of the sweet sticky rice onto the plate next to the mango.
11. Drizzle some of the coconut cream topping over the rice and the mangoes, then sprinkle some of the mung beans over the rice.