Kow Neuw Moon-sticky rice with coconut milk

Sticky rice is an important part in Thai dish. This is known as the core ingredient of Thai dessert and also northeastern Thai food. This dish is easy to make. The ingredients are as follows one cup sticky rice, two tablespoons sugar, one cup coconut milk and two pinches salt. Traditionally this dish was made by using a steamer. The process can be explained as at first the sticky rice should be soaked in enough water so that the rice can be covered for an hour or even sometimes overnight. Water should be there in the bottom of the steamer and the steam section should be covered with cheese or muslin cloth. The rice should be poured in the muslin cloth which is followed by covering the lid. Then the steamer is put on the stove on medium to high heat. It takes twenty minutes to cook the rice in a steamer.

Now a day all of us are habituated to use microwave oven. So, this is better to write down the process of making sticky rice in this gadget. First the rice should be soaked in warm water for about ten minutes. Soaking is important as it makes the rice soft and it also helps a lot in cooking. If the quantity of rice is one cup, the water should be little more than a cup. The cooking bowl should be made of glass. The bowl with rice and water should be covered with lid and cooked for three minutes in full power. The rice should be stirred from up to the bottom. You will fine some part of rice is cooked and some are not. Repeat the process for another three minutes. The rice should look translucent if it really cooked, or else the process of cooking three minutes should be repeated.

In the next phase the coconut milk should be heated in a pot on simmer and constantly stirred till the coconut milk thickens. Sugar and salt should be added till the milk becomes curdled. After this it should be removed from it. ¾ of the hot coconut milk should be poured over the hot sticky rice and it should be like this till five minutes. Rice will absorb the coconut milk, after which it becomes mushy. The rest of the coconut milk can be used for garnishing.

Green papaya salad in Thailand

Green papaya salad is one of the important dishes in Thailand. This is mainly popular among Thai women. This is a northeastern Thai dish is eatable with sticky rice. The other side dishes are beef salad, laab, bamboo shoot salad, etc. Two most popular green papaya salads are best accompanied with salted crab or shrimp. When dried shrimp or peanuts are added, the salad is named as som tum Thai and when it is added with crab, this is called som tum pbooh. The other ingredients remain same in both the cases.

The ingredients can be summarized as one or one and half tablespoons palm sugar, three fourth lime, 2 cups green papaya, five cherry tomatoes, one and one and half tablespoon fish sauce, two chili peppers, one tablespoon dried shrimp, six green beans, one clove garlic, and two tablespoon toasted peanuts which is optional.

If you are preparing vegetarian som tum, dried shrimp should be avoided. You can use fish sauce or soy sauce in place of that. Sometimes lime can be replaced with tamarind and palm sugar can be replaced with regular sugar. The balance of lime juice, fish sauce, peppers, and palm sugar should be properly maintained. In Thailand shredded green papaya is available in every supermarket. Even if you are getting whole papaya, you can peel it and grate it with cheese grater with medium and large sized holes. The seeds should be discarded if there are any. Green papaya salad is usually prepared with the help of a clay mortar, spatula and a wooden pestle.

At first the clove or garlic should be smashed. Green beans and half cherry tomatoes are added afterwards. Chili peppers should be crushed and added to the salad. It should be followed by adding green papaya, toasted peanuts, dried shrimp, fish sauce, palm sugar and lime juice. The pestle is used to push up the mixture in the mortar while spatula is used to push down in order to mix well the mixture. Not much effort is required to prepare the green papaya salad so just go for it and relish it with yours friends and family.