I had never eaten kanom krok (aka Thai coconut cakes or Thai coconut custard) when I attempted to make it during a recent Live Asian Kitchen broadcast. Without a frame of reference as to how it should taste, I found both the recipe I used and the final outcome somewhat perplexing. First of all, it produced a gooey topping that had no chance of setting since it was basically just sugar and coconut cream, and secondly, it just tasted one-dimensional and overly sweet.

Since that first attempt, I’ve managed to dig deeper into this popular Thai street snack, and it’s clear that the original recipe was flawed (it fortified my belief that the internet is full of recipes that should never see the light of day). Here’s one adapted from other sources including Temple of Thai, that makes a lot more sense –

Kanom Krok – Thai Coconut Cakes

INGREDIENTS:

Bottom layer –
⅓ cup desiccated coconut
2 cups rice flour
2 tsp salt
3 ½ cups coconut milk

Top layer –
1 ¾ cups coconut cream
¼ cup sugar
2 ½ TBSP tapioca starch

Fillings (optional) –
¼ cup spring onion, sliced
¼ cup corn kernels
3 TBSP oil

Kanom krok or takoyaki pan, or similar

METHOD:

1. Combine bottom layer ingredients and mix well.
2. Combine top layer ingredients in a blender and blitz until sugar is dissolved.
3. Heat mould and grease lightly with oil.
4. When it starts smoking, fill moulds to ⅔ full with bottom batter.
5. Add the top batter immediately, then sprinkle with optional filling ingredients.
6. Cover and cook for about 5 minutes on low heat, or until crispy and browned on the bottom.
7. Remove and serve.

The post How to Make Kanom Krok – Thai Coconut Cakes first appeared on Jackie M..

Kuih Bingka Ubi or Baked Cassava Cake is about as simple a Malay kuih as you can make, and the bonus is that it’s gluten-free. If you’re based in Sydney, you should be able to find grated cassava easily in the freezer section of Indian and well-stocked Asian grocery stores – it’s a definite timesaver.

BTW I know I’ve posted this recipe on this website previously; this version is based on baking it in an oven as opposed to an air-fryer. I’ve also made some tweaks based on the recipe posted in Malay (that’s why it pays to be multi-lingual, folks) at Resepi Bonda.

Cassava Cake (Kuih Bingka Ubi)

INGREDIENTS:

• 4 cups grated cassava
• 1 ½ cups coconut cream
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 Tbsp butter, cut into small pieces

METHOD:

1. Combine all ingredients except butter, and pour into a greased 8-inch baking tray.
2. Dot the surface of the cake with butter.
3. Bake for 60 minutes at 200°C or until done.
4. Allow to cool before cutting into slices to serve.

My Live Asian Kitchen broadcasts are supported by –

The post How to Make Kuih Bingka Ubi (Baked Cassava Cake) first appeared on Jackie M..

Coconut candy is one of my favourite memories of Deepavali (aka Diwali, though not in Malaysia), the Indian Festival of Lights. During this public holiday, our Indian friends would hold “open houses” where they served up a culinary extravaganza to feed the friends from all ethnic backgrounds who dropped in to visit. (The cycle repeated itself year-long with all the different races/religions and their respective festivals. But I digress.)

For me, coconut candy was the highlight of all the sweet and savoury Deepavali offerings, and it was traditionally made with freshly grated coconut and artificial colouring. In this recipe tweak, I use desiccated coconut since it’s more readily available (I know, I know, not the same etc. but feel free to get your own fresh coconut if you’re lucky enough to find some). Also, I’m using natural plant extract sent out to me by My Blue Tea to produce the colours. (Clearly, should you choose to do so, you can use whatever food colouring you have on hand; using natural plant extract is simply a healthy take on a frankly decadent snack.)

BTW this recipe is roughly based on one by Roti & Rice, but it with some significant changes including the use of coconut cream in lieu of fresh milk, since I don’t drink or keep milk in my fridge.

It’s important to note that the blue flower and roselle powders are both flavour neutral; however, My Blue Tea also carries other plant extracts such as kaffir lime leaf and pandan which do carry the natural flavour of said ingredients.

Watch the video here >>

Coconut Candy

INGREDIENTS:

2 ⅔ cups desiccated coconut
½ cup white sugar
½ cup condensed milk
½ cup coconut cream
3 Tbsps butter
1 ½ tsps blue pea flower powder
2 tsps roselle flower powder

METHOD:

1. Combine desiccated coconut, sugar, condensed milk, coconut cream and butter in a saucepan.
2. Cook on low to medium heat until ingredients are well-blended and hold together like dough.
3. Split into two halves if using two colours like I did; mix one half with blue pea flower powder and the other half with roselle powder.
4. Transfer into a tray lined with baking paper, then allow to cool completely.
5. Cut into squares and serve.

This recipe series is made in collaboration with My Blue Tea . Check out their website for blue flower powder and other products; they ship worldwide

The post How to Make Coconut Candy first appeared on Jackie M..

However, this particular batch turned out different enough (in a good way) that I thought it worth sharing. Plus there’s the added element of serving it with egg noodles as an alternative to boiled rice.

There were several points of difference in this chicken curry recipe; I can’t nail down which of these elements helped lift it a notch above my usual effort but it’s worth considering next time you’re in an experimental mood –

• the use of turmeric leaf which was generously given to me by a fellow former Malaysian, Haryati
• a different brand of curry powder
• fresh chillies (I usually omit adding chillies)
• a different brand of coconut cream

Watch the Replay to get the most out of this recipe –

Malaysian Chicken Curry with Turmeric Leaf

INGREDIENTS:

2kg chicken drumsticks
8 cloves garlic
1 ½ onions, peeled & quartered
4 Tbsps (Malaysian) Parrot Brand meat curry powder
2 large chillies
3 Tbsps minced lemongrass
1 turmeric leaf, tied in a knot
2 cups Rasaku coconut cream
2 cups water
2 Tbsps chicken powder
1 tsp salt
⅔ Tbsps sugar
4 Tbsps oil

To serve:

Rice, or –

Fresh egg noodles, cooked in boiling water for 1-2 minutes, then drained. Different types of egg noodles will produce different textures; in these photos, I used “wonton noodles” ie. thin egg noodles that look like they’re lightly coated with flour, available in the refrigerated section of Asian grocery stores.

METHOD:

1. Combine garlic, onion and chillies in a food processor and blend.
2. Mix to a paste with minced lemongrass and curry powder.
3. Heat a heavy-based pan and saute the curry paste with oil until the onion is browned.
4. Add chicken drumsticks and saute a further 3 minutes.
5. Add all other ingredients and simmer, stirring occasionally, until the chicken is cooked. Adjust seasonings as needed before removing from heat.
6. Alternatively, after step 3, transfer all ingredients into a pressure cooker and pressure-cook for 15 minutes. This will produce a more saucy (ergo: watered-down, therefore add more seasoning as needed) chicken curry, which you can use as a curry base for egg noodles.

The post How to Cook Malaysian Chicken Curry Noodles first appeared on Jackie M..

This has to be my favourite among the many accompaniments that make up a Nasi Kerabu – chillies stuffed with a mix of fish paste and coconut, then simmered in coconut milk.

Solok Lada (Stuffed Chillies)

INGREDIENTS:

300g large red chillies, slit on one side vertically and deseeded

500g basa fillets

1 Tbsp tapioca starch

½ cup desiccated coconut

1 Tbsp chicken powder

½ tsp pepper

To simmer –

2 cups coconut milk/cream

1 Tbsp sugar

½ Tbsp chicken powder

METHOD:

1. Cut basa fillets into 3-inch widths.
2. Transfer into food processor along with tapioca starch, chicken powder and pepper.
3. Pulse into a paste. Add desiccated coconut and mix well.
4. Stuff chillies with fish paste.
5. Transfer coconut milk, sugar and chicken powder into saucepan.
6. Add stuffed chillies and simmer on low heat, covered, until cooked through – about 10 minutes. Add more water or coconut milk as needed.

The post How to Make Solok Lada (Malay Stuffed Chillies) – Nasi Kerabu Part 4 of 4 first appeared on Jackie M..

I cooked the sticky rice by adding a bit more water than you would for white rice, then set the pressure cooker on the “porridge” setting and it worked beautifully.

I first encountered sticky rice cooked with durian and palm sugar at an expo in Kuala Lumpur on the culinary offerings of Pahang. I forget what it’s called, and a google search of pulut (sticky rice) + durian yields nothing that looks like what I ate, so you’ll have to take my word for it that this dish does in fact exist. Absent palm sugar, just use white sugar to yield an equally delicious (I’m guessing; haven’t tried it) result.

Durian with Palm Sugar and Sticky Rice

INGREDIENTS:

• 2 cups sticky rice (cooked as per regular rice but with a bit more water, plus pinch of salt)
• 2 pieces durian, seeds removed
• 2 Tbsp white sugar
• 50g palm sugar
• ⅓ cup coconut cream

METHOD:

1. Combine all ingredients in a non-stick pan.
2. Mix well, then bring to a low simmer.
3. Cook until mixture is semi-dry and a sticky consistency.
4. Allow to cool, then serve.

Sticky Rice with Serunding

INGREDIENTS:

• 2 cups sticky rice, cooked per above

• 2 cups desiccated coconut
• ½ onion, minced
• 6 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 Tbsps minced lemongrass
• 3 Tbsps curry powder
• 2 Tbsps mushroom seasoning
• 1 tsp salt
• 3-4 Tbsps sugar
• 3 Tbsps oil

• Japanese seaweed sheets

METHOD:

1. Combine onion, garlic, lemongrass and curry powder in a non-stick pan.
2. Fry on low heat to remove some of the moisture from the onion.
3. Add oil and fry until spice paste is lightly browned.
4. Add all other ingredients, mix well and cook a further 5 minutes.
5. Adjust seasoning, remove from heat and allow to cool.
6. To assemble, place 2 Tbsps sticky rice on seaweed sheet.
7. Flatten into a rectangular shape, then place 2 tsps serunding along the length of the sticky rice and roll up.
8. Cut into sushi-sized pieces before serving.
9. Alternatively, roll sticky rice into balls and coat with serunding before serving.

*** I used an Optimum Induction Pressure-Cook Pro for the Sticky Rice recipes in this post. More details on this appliance can be found at Prestige Home Appliances.

The post How to Use Glutinous (Sticky) Rice – 2 Vegan Recipes first appeared on Jackie M..

I’ve covered this topic to some extent in a previous blog post so check that out for the recipe for making your own coconut milk.

In this Periscope broadcast, I reveal –

• • what Malaysian recipes mean by thick and thin coconut milk

• • why the blogosphere’s explanation of coconut cream is wrong

• • the difference between coconut cream and creamed coconut

• how to make kerisik (it’s not toasted coconut shreds as claimed by some of the top food blogs)

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The post Coconut and Kerisik (30 Days 30 Asian Ingredients Series Day 2) first appeared on Jackie M..

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When I was studying at Sydney University, I used to work at the iconic Lee’s Malaysian Takeaway at Wynyard station.

Their laksa was delicious and quite famous, but it used fresh milk instead of coconut milk. My boss told me that was because when they first opened their eatery you couldn’t get coconut milk in this part of the world.

(In a role reversal, fresh milk was not readily available in Malaysia when I was growing up; now that it is,  using fresh milk has become a “thing” and a selling point with some versions of laksa there.)

Fast forward a couple of decades and coconut milk is now found in supermarkets everywhere – even in Malaysia the use of packet and canned coconut milk/cream is commonplace.

Preamble out of the way, I’m going to go into a more involved explanation of coconut milk than what my accompanying video would necessitate (you would think) but it does lead to a point I want to make.

Watch on YouTube >> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-Zz7gPTeKw

Back in my day (I sound like an old timer) growing up in Malaysia, to get coconut milk you had to buy fresh grated coconut at the wet market and then extract coconut milk from it yourself.

This is how you would do it –

First you squeeze the grated coconut without adding any extra liquid to it – this yields a rich and creamy coconut milk – and is referred to in recipes as, well, thick coconut milk. You might get about 200ml of thick, creamy coconut milk from a large, mature coconut.

Then you add some water to the same batch of shredded coconut and extract a thinner coconut milk from it.

When you use it in your curries, you add the thin milk first, and the thicker milk later (I guess because the thick milk can separate because of the higher fat content, though I personally never worry about that).

Recipes would call for either thick or thin or both types of coconut milk – and we all knew exactly what that meant.

When I first came to Australia you couldn’t buy fresh grated coconut, but canned coconut milk and coconut cream were by that stage fairly accessible.

I drew correlations between “coconut cream” and “thick coconut milk” and “coconut milk” with “thin coconut milk” and used them as such in my cooking. They’re not exact matches for the fresh varieties (this may have something to do with the manufacturing process and the addition of stabilizers etc. in the canned products) but they are roughly about right.

Fast forward a couple of decades and if you now google coconut cream, you will find a number of blogs out there that explain that coconut cream is the thick layer of semi-solid coconut that settles if you let a (fresh) glass of coconut milk sit for awhile.

I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that these bloggers are either superimposing their own understanding of how dairy cream is yielded, onto these coconut derivatives, or drawing their information from sources that don’t originate from the Southeast Asian cooking realm.

As a Malaysian who grew up with coconut milk as an essential cooking ingredient, there was no recipe or technique I’m aware of that taught you to make coconut cream by letting coconut milk settle and skimming the thick layer off the top. It’s always been thick coconut milk (ie. cream) = fresh grated coconut squeezed without additional water.

We didn’t call it coconut cream but I’m guessing it was a marketing/branding decision when canned coconut cream first made its way into the market. The manufacturers’ own definitions confirm my understanding – ie. the difference between coconut cream and coconut milk is that the former is extracted with less water content – it has about 20% less liquid in it. No mention about it being a semi-solid substance skimmed off the top of coconut milk that has settled.

Some other points –

Creamed coconut is different from coconut cream – the former is coconut flesh that’s been ground to a paste and sold in waxy, solid blocks. This is what you make kerisik out of (and not desiccated coconut – another common misconception).

Coconut juice/coconut water is the drink you get from young, green coconuts; coconut milk/cream etc. is obtained from mature, brown coconuts with husks.

I’ve heard of people trying to make coconut milk from the coconut flesh in young green coconuts – it won’t work. Similarly, you don’t drink the juice from mature brown coconuts – it’s not palatable.

There are other ways to make your own coconut milk – you can use frozen shredded coconut, or extract the flesh from a mature coconut and blend it with water, and squeeze it through a cheesecloth.

 In this video I suggested using 1L of water to the 500g pack of desiccated coconut. That yielded a thin coconut milk; you can play around with the water:coconut ratio to achieve the desired consistency.

My past Hangout-on-Air on How to Prepare and Use Coconut, with my crew member Shae Marshall-Rae >>

Click to watch on YouTube >> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXYrcrL18Us

The post How to Make Coconut Milk first appeared on Jackie M..