On one of the days of my trip to Thailand, I was able to dedicate it entirely to attending a Thai cooking course. It was a day to remember because the course exceeded expectations and I was able to learn how to prepare a lot of Thai dishes. But the detail of the course remains for another day and today I am going to share with you the recipe for this striking dessert that stands out for its simplicity as well as its impressive flavor.
In addition, I have prepared a short introduction on what glutinous rice is, how to cook it and where to get it.
Do you have a pen and paper ready? Read on, take note, and put it into practice!
What is glutinous rice / sticky rice?
It is a variety of rice types of the north/northeast of Thailand that has a very sticky texture due to the high amount of starch it contains. This type of rice is widely used in desserts and also as an accompaniment to savory dishes, often eaten with your hands.
Where to buy glutinous rice / sticky rice?
They have it in specialized oriental food stores, such as Japanese or Chinese. Also in the English court and on several online websites. In principle, it is not a difficult ingredient to find if you look for it a little. But if you can't find it, glutinous rice can be substituted for round grain rice and the result, although it will not be exactly the same, will be quite similar.
How to cook glutinous rice / sticky rice?
To make the rice sticky, you have to soak it beforehand and then steam it. These are the steps to follow to prepare the sticky rice:Put the rice in fresh water for at least 4 hours and if the soaking can last overnight, the better.
Wash the rice twice with fresh water.
Put the rice in a container suitable for steaming and steam it for about 30 minutes, until its consistency is smooth. Halfway through cooking, we can give it a couple of gentle turns so that the heat is well distributed.
The container used throughout Thailand is a kind of bamboo basket placed over a pot where it cooks water that the container does not touch. We can use a bamboo basket of those to prepare dim-sum or we can substitute all this for a pot that has holes in the bottom to steam, what we have to do is cover the holes with a cloth and on it place the rice.
To keep the rice sticky inconsistency, it is important to keep it in a tightly covered container to prevent it from hardening and drying out. If the rice becomes dry, it can be steamed again for a while until it becomes sticky again.
And now it's time to move on to the Mango Sticky Rice recipe :
INGREDIENTS for two people
1 ripe mango
1 cup of glutinous rice prepared as I just told you
1/2 cup of coconut milk
2 tablespoons of brown sugar
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons of toasted sesame as a topping
In the photos, instead of sesame, you will see a very small legume. They are called Mung Beans and they are like some very typical small beans from some Asian countries, here it is more difficult to find them but if you put sesame in their place it will be very rich and the presentation will be good too. There we also use palm sugar (paste consistency) which here can be perfectly substituted for brown sugar.
PREPARATION:
Put the coconut milk with the 2 tablespoons of brown sugar and the teaspoon of salt in a saucepan and heat, without bringing to a boil, for 8 minutes.Reserve a few tablespoons of this coconut milk and put the rest in a bowl.
In the bowl, add the steamed rice over the still-hot coconut milk and stir until well mixed.
To present the mango: wash it, cut it flush with the seed and make deep oblique cuts in two directions, like the ones in the photo. With your thumbs, press on the skin area to turn it over and in this way, the pulp will remain in the shape of cubes. This is optional and if you prefer you can peel the mango and serve it sliced or chunky.
Put the rice on a plate and next to it the mango. Pour over both the coconut milk that we had reserved after preparing it in the casserole. Sprinkle the sesame.
I encourage you to prepare this dessert, it is very good and it is very easy to prepare. In addition, it is a recipe with which to surprise your guests because while you have dessert you can tell them all this that I have told you about glutinous rice and how they eat/prepare it in Thailand, they will love it!
0 Comments