Shortcut Sticky Rice and Mango (Khao Niew Mamuang)
skip the soaking for this Thai-Viet approach
Hello everyone!
Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms reading this!
Last weekend, my siblings and I celebrated my mom early. I didn’t want her to do much cooking but she couldn’t resist getting in on the sizzling rice crepe (bánh xèo) action. At the stove, we swapped techniques and she still told me what to do, as she should. She’ll always be my mom — a person who lives up to Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down”.
Cheers and hugs to all the folks who have served as someone’s mother. You are brave, patient, and kind.
Mango on the mind
It’s mango season and this week, the juicy, sweet and slightly tangy fruit struck my fancy three times: (1) while reading The Mango Tree, Annabelle Tometich’s memoir about her Filipino mom resorting to violence to protect her mango tree; (2) texting with friends about their photos of homegrown mangoes; and (3) listening to my brother-in-law talk about all the delicious mangoes he ate in Thailand, which reminded me about the ones I gobbled up in Bangkok.
In Vietnam, my mom got us to eat more rice by putting ripe mango in the bowl and adding a sprinkling of fish sauce. I loved the salty-sweet combination. Green mango salad is a personal favorite too. So is Thai coconutty sticky rice and mango, called xôi xoài in Vietnamese.
I rarely make iconic khao niew mamuang (the treat’s Thai name) because all the recipes I’ve read call for soaking the rice for hours or overnight, followed by a stovetop steaming process then dousing it with sweetened coconut milk. I wondered if I could apply a Viet pot method to successfully cook the coconut rice without soaking and without a steamer.
Turns out, I didn’t need to soak and I didn’t need to steam. I didn’t even need to microwave. It was so easy and delicious.
With all the soaking time, extra dishwashing, and fuss gone, I played with tinting and flavoring the rice green with pandan leaf (là đứa in Vietnamese, bai toey in Thai). I tried different fruit. I also did a test to develop a workaround so you don’t need pandan leaf! 😉
My method may make a Thai chef wince but it is fun to make and eat. Thailand and Vietnam are close neighbors and culinary kin in many ways.
Use this recipe to make Thai coconut sticky rice and mango in about 1 hour. It’s vegan and gluten-free to boot. And there’s not much sugar involved either.
I got many of you to invest in sticky rice so I need to give you reasons to use it up while building your sticky rice cooking know-how. In this dispatch, expect:
An explanation for why this method works plus how to make it work for you!
Guidance on ingredient selection and substitutes (fruit! pandan! rice!)
Full text recipe and downloadable PDF recipe
Extra pointers for advance prep and scaling the recipe up and down