I have no taste for strong Indian curry but I rather like Thai curry for the usage of ingredients and herbs that are familiar to Vietnamese cooking. I have observed this way of making curry before when my Indonesian friends came over to my home and cooked us some traditional Indonesian dishes, one of which was a curry dish. Some herbal and root ingredients are processed into paste – which is the curry paste itself. The way of using coconut milk instead of water to make the slightly thick soup is very authentic and typical to this kind of curry. Coconut milk makes the curry more flavorful though the soup is also fatter, but this is crucial to bring out the genuine taste.

Some prefer the soup to be thick but I’d rather cook it just slightly thick by using thinner coconut milk, which I feel more pleasant to eat. I also use fewer chilies to reduce the spiciness. Besides, I also cook with less oil. It is great to have this curry with hot steamed rice on cold days.

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I got this recipe from one of my baking books. Actually I’ve never had a chance to visit Bangkok and see whether these waffles are in fact very popular as a street food there or not. 

Just because I have been impressed by many other Thai foods, I didn’t hesitate to try making these waffles, or pancakes. These waffles contain typical flavours of Thai cuisine and the ingredients are used widely in many other dishes. According to the book, the dipping sauce is made from pure fish sauce, but when I tried that way, the sauce was too strong, therefore the flavor of the waffles became insignificant. So I decided to lighten the sauce by adding some water and sugar to it. And the dipping sauce became more pleasant to serve with the waffles. 

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I made this pumpkin cream by accident. I had a small pumpkin which I intended to make a popular Thai custard with pumpkin. However, I didn’t have enough eggs and I only had a little coconut milk left. Not bothering going to the super market to shop for just a few ingredients, I decided to go ahead with making the custard and I didn’t expect the custard to really set inside the pumpkin because I knew the mixture would be quite thin. 

I still wanted to try. Not only the eggs and the coconut milk were reduced, the coconut milk was also thinner and the sugar was reduced as well. After I steamed the pumpkin, I removed the skin and place everything in the blender to make a very smooth and thick cream. Then after being chilled in the fridge, the creamed pumpkin turned out a very pleasant dessert. It was very creamy in the mouth with gentle sweetness plus distinctive flavor of the palm sugar. Less coconut milk was used also made this creamed pumpkin healthier and more suitable to our liking. 

I was so delighted at this trial and the outcome really pleased me. 

Ingredients: 

- 1 small pumpkin (about 200g)

- 3 eggs

- 135ml coconut milk

- 50g palm sugar, grated

- 1 bunch of pandan leaves (optional), rinsed well

Methods:

- Clean the pumpkin well. Use a knife to cut off around the stem to make a lid. Scoop out the seeds and membrane. Clean both inside and outside thorougly and drain. 

- Add eggs, coconut milk, palm sugar in a large bowl. Crumple the mixture with pandan leaves until sugar is dissolved. (If you don’t use pandan leaves, just whisk the mixture until well combined). Remove the leaves and set the mixture aside. 

- Place the pumpkin in a bowl or deep plate, fill with the egg mixture and cover with the lid. Place the pumpkin in a large steamer with boiling water over medium heat. Cook for about 25-30 minutes or until the pumpkin flesh is very softened. 

- Let the pumpkin cool completely. 

- Remove the skin of the pumpkin and transfer all the pumpkin to a blender. Process until the mixture is very smooth. Refridgerate the pumpkin cream until it is chilled thoroughly. 

I was attracted to this beautiful dessert firstly by its tempting color. And I love pomegranate, too, however, it’s has been a long time since my last experience with pomegrantes (those in Singapore are too expensive for me and they do not often look fresh in supermarkets). So I was curious at this mock pomegrante sweetened soup. 

I learned about this dessert when browsing a collection book of Thai desserts. I realized that a typical characteristic of many Thai sweet desserts is the application of coconut milk/ coconut cream in making the sweet soup. Coconut flavor is present in almost every recipe. I also realized that they (Thai people, or at least the recipes in that book) use a very large amount of sugar and coconut milk, which sometimes the coconut soup yielded overwhelms the other main ingredients and too sweet. 

Having too much sugar and coconut milk is not good to the health, so when cooking Thai dessert, I just take note of the ingredients and cooking process, then I change the amount of sugar and coconut milk, sometimes also omit unnecessary extra coconut milk so that the taste suits my liking better and that I do not feel guilty when enjoying Thai desserts as such. So, like me, you may adapt the recipe and use the quantity of sugar and coconut milk/ coconut cream according to your taste and liking. 

With this dessert in particular, actually, the ‘mock pomegranate seeds’ are water chestnut cubes covered with tapioca flour. The water chestnuts are soaked in water with some red food coloring to obtain the typical red color of the pomegranates. I used strawberry paste coloring, just one or two drops are enough to bring out this color. When cooking, you may not see the color as deep and profound as such. But after cooking, when you let them stand for a while until serving time, they do appear with this color. I was doubtful a lot while making this, however, later on when serving and taking photo of it, the red color was exactly what I expected to have. 

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Though it is sweet in the taste, this sweet red bean soup has a heat-relieving effect. That’s why during summer time, many Vietnamese women prepare this sweet bean soup at home when it is hot. Instead of red bean, green bean also has this effect. After being chilled, or added with some ice cubes, the cold soup becomes very refreshing. My mom often cooked sweet bean soup, too. I remembered hot summer days when I got home after school, I would be happy as a clam to find out a small bowl of cold sweet bean soup in the fridge that my mom had prepared for me.

When guests came to visit the family during summer days, greeting them with the chilled soup would be a simple yet friendly treat. The cold soup helps reduce the heat of inside the body. Using rock sugar as a sweetener is also a tip to gain the heat-relieving effect of this soup. In addition, to add more pleasant and special flavor to the soup, I added some dried tangerine peels while cooking the beans. The soup can be served just as it is, or a little coconut cream added will bring in a different taste.

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