This is one of the dishes with glutinous rice I like the most. Not only it has a lovely green color which reminds us of green growing rice-fields, it offers a gentle refreshing flavor of pandan leaves as well.
In the past, pandan leaves used to play an important part to increase the quality of meals of Vietnamese common people. During that hard time, people had only poor-quality rice to eat. The rice was not fragrant at all, not mentioning many had to eat rice with bad smell. In order to make the rice more palatable to eat, people added some pandan leaves when they cooked rice. The fragrance of the leaves would distract the undesirable smell.
Nowadays people no longer use pandan leaves when cooking rice. But their use value is still useful in many other dishes.
Ingredients (serves 4)
- 250g glutinous rice
- 10 pandan leaves
- 50g shredded coconut
- 20g sesame seeds, toasted
- 30g white sugar
- Wash the rice well. Drain and put in a bowl.
- Clean the pandan leaves well, then chop. Add 1/3 cup boiled water to the chopped leaves and process altogether to extract the juice. Use a cloth to strain the juice and remove the fiber. Reserve 1/4 cup pandan juice.
- Pour the remaining pandan juice to the rice and add enough water to cover the rice. Soak the rice in pandan water for 8-10 hours. The rice grains will be dyed green.
- Steam the glutinous rice for about 30 minutes until tender and chewy. Remove from the heat and mix the reserved pandan juice, toasted sesame seeds, shredded coconut and sugar. Toss well to combine.
Trang on Mon, 16th Jul 2012 2:27 pm
Is there a substitute for the panda leaves? Thank you!