Sawadi ka!

We are continuing to share Thai recipes made from coconut milk and shown to us by our dear contributor and excellent cook, Jan Swakon (Sunset Restaurant, Koh Lanta). Thai recipes are very simple to prepare, tasty and nutritious and can be perfectly adapted to the country we live in and the local food we have available to us.

This time we are going to learn how to make coconut-flavoured rice, which can be eaten with seasonal fruits. Let’s go!

Ingredients:

• 2 cups of cooked rice (or steamed)
• 1 cup of homemade coconut milk
• 2 tablespoons of cane sugar or another sweetener
• ½ teaspoon of salt
• 1 banana
• 1 mango

Preparation:

1. First cook the rice in a pot with water and a little salt. Jan recommends using short-grain rice since it is sweeter and stickier, which is what we’re looking for.
2. Put a cup of homemade coconut milk in a pot. Add the sugar and salt to the milk and mix until all the ingredients are well diluted.
3. Next mix the rice (it needs to be hot) with the coconut milk (sweetened) and stir well for 1 or 2 minutes.
4. Serve on a plate accompanied by pieces of mango and banana.

It’s delicious but it’s very filling, so I recommend that you serve small portions in case you can’t finish it!

Tips and alternatives

• If this is the first time that you mare making coconut milk, you should know that it goes hard in the fridge. A large layer of fat appears (the saturated fatty acids) on top of the milk. For this reason, if you use homemade coconut milk from the fridge and it is separated (fat and water), I recommend that you heat it up so that it homogenises and you can easily dilute the sugar and salt in it. If you make the coconut milk at the same time as the rice, you won’t need to heat it up because it will still be warm and homogenous.
• You can accompany the rice with any other sweet, fresh seasonal fruit.

There are more traditional recipes made with coconut milk in the “Thai cooking” section of this blog.

Have a nice day!