Recipe | Thai mango sticky rice

Thai cuisine must be among my favourite go-to food when I crave a burst of unexpected flavour combinations on my palate. If you’ve had the privilege to visit Thailand, you would agree with me. Thailand’s street food scene pops with endless flavours, and admirable creativity. Perhaps it has to do with its agricultural diversity, which produces a diverse range of ingredients all year around; or its temperate climate, where people turn their innate, natural cravings into delicious yet cooling dishes to counteract its tropical humidity. When I think of Thai food, I think “sweet, savoury, spicy, all at once”, I would often describe this experience as “having a party in my mouth”.

Like any other cuisines in the world, what we know about them is hardly the full story. A lot of dishes fly under the radar, like the mango sticky rice pudding. A simple yet delicious dessert, consisting of a small portion of sticky rice, also known as “glutenous rice”, drenched in a sweet and slightly savoury coconut sauce, accompanied by ripe, sliced mango.

The world turned its eye to this iconic Thai dessert recently after Thai rapper and performance artist, Milli (the first Thai artist to perform solo at the world renowned music festival Coachella)  ate a bowl of mango sticky rice on stage. Its rising popularity since even caught the attention of the Thai government, which considered proposing it to Unesco as a world heritage food item. An example of how food is so intricately tied to a people’s identity and memory. Food preparation is a dignified practice to preserve history.

It’s a real treat, even for vegans. Though this short grain rice may be translated as “glutenous”, it does not contain gluten at all, it is, in fact, a gluten-free dessert. To prepare this dish, you start by soaking rice in water overnight, then cook it in a bamboo steamer, boil coconut milk with sugar and small amount of salt, steep the rice in the coconut sauce, let it cool, arrange sliced mango and rice on a plate, and then drizzle the rest of coconut sauce over, et voila! 

Note: If you don’t have a bamboo steamer, you can cook it in a rice cooker, if you don’t a rice cooker, you can cook it in a pot, but preferably wrap soaked rice in a cheese cloth. If you have sushi rice on hand in your pantry cupboard because you’re also a fancy sushi chef at home from time to time, use sushi rice.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup of sticky rice or sushi rice, I’ve tried this with sago, it’s much lighter and just as delicious, mango sticky rice purists may beg to differ
• 1 ripe mango
• 1 tin coconut milk
• ½ cup sugar
• ½ TBS salt
• 1 TBS rice flour

Method:

1. Start by soaking sticky rice in water overnight, the next day pop the rice into a cheese cloth and into a steamer for 20 minutes. As mentioned before, you can use a rice cooker or a simple pot to boil the rice, it would be best to use a cheese cloth due to the stickiness of rice.
2. In the meantime, make the coconut sauce, by adding ½ tin of coconut milk, ½ of sugar in the ingredient list and salt (very important, salt brings out the sweetness of the sauce), stir until mixed well.
3. After 20 minutes in the steamer, check the rice by tasting it, it should be cooked through, add rice to the coconut milk, sugar and salt mixture, mix well and let the coconut rice sit for 40 minutes, till cooled down.
4. Make pouring sauce, in a small saucepan, add the rest of the coconut milk, sugar and salt, on low heat, gently stir for a few minutes, add rice flour to thicken, stir till mixed well. Remember to taste, the key to this pouring sauce is “sweet and salty”, so more salt should be added if needed.
5. Serve, arrange rice on plate and lay out sliced mango in the way you like it, then pour coconut sauce over, garnish with a mint leaf or black sesame seeds, and there you are! Bon appétit!