Pandan Coconut Sticky Rice & Mango

One of my favourite simple desserts ever is mango and sticky rice also known as the OG name - khao niaow ma muang. The creaminess and sweetness the coconut gives off with the freshness of mango combined with the chewiness of the rice always hits the spot for me.

It may require ingredients you haven’t heard of before, but I think it’s important to expand our flavours and get to know ingredients you may not already know. You can find pandan, palm sugar and glutinous rice in almost all asian supermarkets, and this dessert is so simple that you need these ingredients for it to shine.

The process of cooking the glutinous rice is long, but its mostly hands off, so it requires very little attention from you, and the result is magnificent and completely worth it.

serves: 2 people

prep/cooking time: 4+ hours

Ingredients

1 big ripe honey mango, or a variety of your choice (i’m peculiar with my mango), cut into strips of 2cm

toasted sesame, for garnish, optional

For the thickened coconut sauce:

7 tbsp coconut milk

1 tsp cornstarch

3 tsp palm sugar (can substitute with light cane sugar or coconut sugar)

Method:

1. Whisk the cornstarch and sugar together, adding a little coconut milk until no clumps are left.

2. In a pot add the sugar mixture, and whisk the leftover milk into the mix until no lumps can be found. Turn the heat up high and continue whisking until the mixture comes to a boil and thickens. Whisk for 1 minute after it comes to a boil, then take it off the heat. At this point there should be no lumps and the coconut sauce should be thick. If you have lumps, feel free to pass the sauce through a sieve.

For the rice:

1/2 cup sticky/glutinous rice

2 pandan leaves

2/3 cup full fat coconut milk

3 tbsp palm sugar (can substitute with light cane sugar or coconut sugar)

pinch of salt

Method:

1. Add your rice into a bowl and cover with water. Let soak for a minimum of 4 hours up to overnight, not more than 14 hours.

2. After soaking, thoroughly rinse the rice until the water runs clear and prepare a steamer basket lined with damp cheesecloth on top of a pot filled with water (do not let the water run into the basket.) Add the cleaned rice into the basket and lay 1 pandan leaf on top (if the pandan is too long cut it in pieces.) Lay another damp cheesecloth on top, sealing it like a parcel, and let the water come to a boil. Cover with a lid and cook for 20-25 minutes or until your rice grains are cooked- cooking time will depend on how long it’s been soaked for, the longer its been soaked the less time it takes.

3. Meanwhile, in a pot, add the rest of the ingredients; leftover pandan leaf, coconut milk, sugar and salt. Bring the mixture to a boil whilst stirring constantly, and cook for 3-4 minutes, until the sugar has fully dissolved, and the coconut sauce coats the back of a spoon. Take it off the heat and put a lid on it.

4. When the rice has fully cooked, discard the pandan leaf from both rice and sauce and add the cooked rice into the pandan coconut mixture. Stir the rice and sauce together until all the grains are coated, put the lid back on and let rest for 10-15 minutes so that the grains absorb the liquid

5. When the rice has absorbed the liquid, plate the dessert. Spoon the rice and mango onto a plate, drizzle some previously made thickened coconut sauce onto the rice and garnish with sesame seeds. Eat still warm or let cool at room temp. I wouldn’t recommend eating this cold as the rice can get a little hard when in the fridge, the mango on the other hand can be cold.