Sticky Rice With Mango - A Thai Treasure

Although I am truly devoted to chocolate, this classic Thai dessert holds a very special place in my heart. It may not sound like much, but I assure you, the taste is life-altering.

I remember the first time I tasted sticky rice with mango quite clearly. It was 1997, I was 20 years old and my friend, Katie and I were newly arrived in Bangkok, Thailand, our first stop on a trip round the world in lieu of our second semester of junior year at Wesleyan University -- and an excellent trade off at that!

We were with our wonderful hostess, Sumitmai, an amazingly generous, fun-loving, retired Thai woman who had more or less adopted us shortly after we landed in Bangkok's oppressive heat and humidity.

She guided us to a booth in one of Bangkok's many markets where she procured a large serving of kao niow mamuang (a.k.a. sticky rice with mango) which she assured us we would like. We dug in, not realizing that our minds were about to be blown.

The sweet, coconut milk-flavored rice was warm, chewy and delicious on its own. But paired with the expertly sliced (cutting fruit is truly an art in Thailand) buttery, perfectly ripe, yellow mango, it became something else entirely.

Naturally, Katie and I polished it all off within minutes, looking sadly at the empty container when the last grains of sweet, sticky rice were gone. From that point on, we bought sticky rice with mango at every opportunity, something I've continued to do in the 13 years since then.

I made two attempts at making sticky rice with mango at home - both ended in utter disaster... So I've settled for ordering it at Thai restaurants from time to time.

Given the depth of my passion for kao niow mamuang, you can probably imagine my delight when I saw it on the list of recipes I'd be learning at the excellent Thai cooking class I took three years ago. The class was taught by Kasma Loha Unchit, an expat Thai woman who lives in Oakland, California. It was hands-down the best cooking class I've ever taken. One night a week for a month, Kasma covered the basic philosophy of Thai cuisine, where to find the best ingredients in the Bay area, what brands were best (preservative and additive-free and made with the highest quality ingredients), fascinating bits of Thai history (for example, did you know that pad thai, Thailand's national dish, was invented by the Chinese?!), and a dizzying array of delicious Thai recipes.

Enough yammering though. It's time for the recipe. It's very easy to make sticky rice. But you must follow a few basic rules:

1. Buy the right rice! Sticky rice is not sushi rice, that is a different variety that won't work for this (I've tried and failed). Sticky rice is also called "sweet rice" or "glutinous rice". According to Kasma, who has certainly done her research, the best brands to buy are Buddha, Golden Phoenix or Butterfly. If at all possible, buy a rice from Thailand to make sure you're getting the right kind.

2. Buy the right equipment. It's super easy to make delicious sticky rice if you have the right equipment, namely a bamboo steamer and a steamer pot made specifically for this purpose. The bamboo steamer looks like a sort of odd, pointy hat and it sits point-down in the steamer pot. Here is a blurry picture I took of me wearing the steamer basket as a hat.

The pot is shaped more like a jug. You can probably find these things at Asian markets (if they stock South East Asian goods) if you have one close by. However, if not, you can also buy them online for $12 - $30. 

Kasma's instructions were to boil the bamboo steamer/hat before using it the first time to make sure it does not impart a really bamboo-y taste to the rice and to ensure that it is clean since it's probably traveled quite a distance to reach your kitchen. Just submerge it in a large pot of boiling water for a few minutes.

3. Don't forget to soak the rice! This is the part that has derailed my plans a couple of times... You must soak the rice before steaming for at least 4 hours (or overnight) to allow it to soak up extra water before you cook it.

4. Get good mangoes. The rice will still be tasty but pairing it with ripe, delicious mangoes will make a big difference. Manila mangoes are probably the best fit for this recipe - they have a soft, yellow, string-free flesh that is most similar to the Thai mangoes.

Follow these rules and you'll be golden!

Sticky Rice with Mango (Kao Niow Mamuang)

Serves 4

Ingredients

* 2 cups long-grain white sticky rice, sweet rice or glutinous rice

* 2 cups or 1 can coconut milk (Chao Koh brand is a good one)

* 1/2 cup granulated sugar

* 1 tsp salt

* Optional: 3-4 fresh or frozen whole pandanus leaves (bai toey) or a few drops of jasmine (mali) essence

* 1-2 ripe mangoes, peeled and sliced

Directions

1. Rise the sticky rice once or twice, cover with tap water 2-3 inches and soak for four hours (or overnight). The rice will absorb much of the water and grow in size. It will also soften such that the grains will easily break if pressed between the fingers.

2. Drain the rice and pour it into the bamboo basket. Place the bamboo basket to steam over 2-3 inches of water in the metal pot. Cover the top of the bamboo basket with a smallish pot lid and steam for 40-45 minutes, until the rice is thoroughly cooked and, well, sticky.

3. While the rice is steaming, make the coconut sauce: heat the can of coconut milk with the sugar and salt and stir until the grains have all dissolved.

4. Once the rice is finished, dump it out of the basket into a bowl and stir in half of the coconut mixture, mixing well to combine. Slice the mango and serve with the rice, drizzling more of the coconut sauce over the rice before serving.

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Is a Digital Kitchen Scale an Essential Garden Tool? I Think So

I'm working on a post called Six Worthwhile Kitchen Investments for Gardeners, but since my favorite Oxo 11-pound digital kitchen scale is currently on sale for $37.44 at amazon.com with free super saver shipping (and their sales don't often last long) I decided to skip ahead and write about it first. It's worth every penny of the regular $49.99 price (which is what I paid three years ago), but this is a very nice deal. I've raved about this scale before, and no doubt will again.

Basil from the kitchen garden on 9/4/10

Realization of the day:

I literally cannot remember life before my kitchen scale. I often use it several times a day.

If you read the title of this post and your immediate answer was no, I kindly suggest you do these two things and then come back:

1. Go to three different places and buy a bunch of Swiss chard or kale—or even parsley or cilantro—at each one. Are they anywhere near the same size? Didn't think so.

2. Ask three people to measure out two cups of basil leaves for you, then lay the piles side by side and compare them.

Another interesting experiment, though it isn't relevant to my yes, you really do need a kitchen scale argument, is to buy a lemon at three different places and compare the sizes. Zest and juice them if you want, too. Yeah, whoa. Huge difference probably, huh? And how many recipes simply call for 'the zest of one lemon,' or 'the juice of one lemon?' That kind of drives me nuts.

But back to the scale. Once you have one in your kitchen, it's amazing how many things you'll probably find yourself weighing while cooking and baking. They're also are great for weighing postage, especially since you need to know the weight of a package if you want to print out a mailing label online and avoid waiting in line at the post office.

If you're a gardener, a kitchen scale can be put to even more good use—weighing all of your beautiful bounty. A scale will give you a real idea of how much you're harvesting. For example, I had no clue how many total pounds of tomatoes I grow each year—until I started buying them from our Amish neighbors a couple of years ago when I didn't have any and realized we managed to eat 25 pounds in a couple of weeks. And they were all consumed fresh! Thank goodness their prices are very reasonable, but I still really need to get back into my tomato growing groove. Next year, next year.

I've noticed running harvest tallies on several garden blogs this summer, and it's been fun to see how much bounty other gardeners are getting. If you want to feel like a real underachiever be totally impressed, check out Nathan and Aimee's list of harvest totals in the left sidebar of their blog, 2 Acre Farm: The Experiences, Trials, and Lives on a Small Farm in Rural Illinois. Here are just a few of the things on the list as of August 21st, their 16th Farmers' Market Week:

13.35 lbs. Cilantro

29 lb. 11 oz. Purple Top Turnips

46 lbs. Purple Top Turnip Greens

9 lb. 12 oz. Burgundy Okra

4 lbs. 8 oz. Rocket Arugula

121 lb. 9 oz. Provider Snap Beans

A scale is so handy, even if your bounty doesn't weigh anywhere near what theirs does. Thirteen pounds of cilantro? Forty-six pounds of turnip greens? Oh my gosh. I just realized that these might actually just be the harvest totals for that one day, not the entire year to date. There's a total of 49 different vegetables listed. Are these two gardeners amazing or what? Everything is Certified Naturally Grown, and this was their first full season!

I bought my first digital kitchen scale at least ten years ago, and immediately fell in love. So many things to weigh! Three years ago I upgraded to this 11-pound Oxo Good Grips scale, which is currently on sale at amazon.com, and have nothing but good things to say about it. It weighs in both grams and ounces, and the pull-out display, which allows you to weigh big bowls of things, is fabulous. It's no surprise that America's Test Kitchen (the publishers of Cook's Illustrated and Cook's Country magazines) voted this scale #1.

It's also small enough that instead of storing it away in a cupboard, I just stand it on end and lean it on the back of my big butcher block work table, so it's always within easy reach. If you're a bread baker, a kitchen scale is great for dividing up dough. For example, my Oatmeal Toasting Bread recipe makes three loaves, and weighing the dough allows you to easily make them all the same size. And portioning out 16 Carrot Herb Rolls is a snap.

I haven't been harvesting much of anything by the pound lately, but I did manage to snip almost 12 ounces of basil from my one plant back on September 4th. After trimming off the stems, I ended up with the 6-7/8 ounces you see pictured above, which I turned into some wonderful pesto. This was the second cutting—remember how I ruined the first one back in August?

Then yesterday afternoon, with the threat of falling temps, I picked another 2-7/8 ounces, some of which will go into some of my easy homemade Italian sausage, which will in turn go onto a homemade pizza (you'll find my simple pizza dough recipe here). I covered the plant with floating row cover and an old bedsheet, but didn't want to take any chances. And good thing, as it's 32° this morning! I left plenty of new growth on the plant and may even get another small harvest from it, depending on the weather—and if I remember to cover it up each night. For more about this, check out my previous post, How To Keep Your Basil Plants Growing into Fall.

Do you have a kitchen scale? What do you love weighing with it?

For those of you who can't wait to hear what my other five worthwhile kitchen investments for gardeners—or anyone with access to a good farmers' market—are (and in case for some reason I never get around to finishing that post), I'll list them briefly here:

—A food dehydrator. My first one quickly paid for itself in dried tomatoes alone—simply slice paste tomatoes in half and set them cut side up in the trays. A few years ago I upgraded to this Nesco 700-watt model and love it. The adjustable thermostat is great. You can learn how easily I dry pear slices in this recent post on Farmgirl Fare: Got Pears? My Three Favorite Recipes, Plus How To Make Your Own Dried Pears.

—A food mill. I use a classic Foley food mill to make my Really Easy Low Sugar Pear Butter and Homemade Tomato Vegetable Juice, but I'm just looking for an excuse to order this Oxo Good Grips food mill, which doesn't cost much more than the Foley and has three different grinding discs, along with some other nifty features. Several Farmgirl Fare readers said they love theirs in the comments section of my Pear Butter Recipe post.

—A Water Bath Canner. Canning is a great way to preserve seasonal bounty. It isn't difficult or dangerous, and the basic equipment is very affordable. I use a canner like this one, and I've found this inexpensive home canning accessories kit to be invaluable.

—A FoodSaver vacuum sealer. We have one of the original models that still works after 20+ years, and have used it to seal everything from green beans to spare chainsaw chains (keeps them from rusting). A few years ago I bought this really nice one, which is still available although apparently discontinued by the manufacturer. You can purchase ready made bags, but it's much more economical to buy rolls of the FoodSaver bag material and make your own. The bags can be reused over and over. (I haven't had good luck using other brands of bag material.) The FoodSaver company also has excellent customer service.

—A chest freezer. We have several. The first tiny one I purchased nearly 20 years ago entirely changed my life. Our newest one is 24.9 cubic feet. Totally worth the initial investment and literally only costs a few dollars a month to run.

Okay, so I guess this pretty much does cover the entire originally planned Six Worthwhile Kitchen Investments for Gardeners post!

Did I miss anything? What kitchen tool does the gardener in you never want to be without?

© FarmgirlFare.com, the hot tea drinking foodie farm blog where it's time to get out there and see how everything in the garden and greenhouse look on this chilly morning, and then start preparing for tonight's predicted frost—12 days earlier this year than our 'official' first frost date. Yikes.

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