Macadamia Coconut Brittle

Macadamia Coconut Brittle
Ed & Don's

If someone you know is heading to Hawaii for vacation, and if you selflessly volunteer to take care of whatever needs tending in their absence, you might just be rewarded with some tropical delicacy or other. Try hinting that a can of Ed & Don's Macadamia Coconut Brittle would be just the thing.

Made by hand on O'ahu since 1956, this crackly brittle is full of both actual butter and buttery macadamias.  Add in the toasted coconut, and this confection's perfume is so potent, you get some residual satisfaction by huffing the empty can. 

Kue Wajik

Kue Wajik

A favorite street snack in both Indonesia (kue wajik) and Malaysia (kuih wajik), this simple rice cake showcases the quality of its three main ingredients:  sticky rice, coconut milk, and palm sugar.  Made from the sweet sap of various types of palm tree, the color, flavor, and texture of palm sugars can vary enormously according to the trace minerals that remain after processing.  Search for images of kue wajik and you'll see cakes that look golden, tan, rusty, or as if they've been doused in barbecue sauce, thanks to minimally refined palm sugars like gula melaka or gula jawa.  Made with the paler, more processed palm sugar from a Seattle grocery, my kue a little anemic-looking--but still delicious.  

Coconut Kokis

Coconut Kokis
Tropicland, $2.95/box

In conversation I described these little Malaysian cookies at "crumb-y" and then had to clarify that the b was silent, not missing.

The term kokis appears to apply to a fairly broad range of cookies, cakes, and breads; these particular ones are mildly sweet compressed nuggets of toasted coconut and bread crumbs.  I imagine you could get something similar by dumping the detritus at the bottom of a cereal box into a panini press.  That their pleasantly abrasive crunch survived the trip from SKS Food Industries in Jahor, Malaysia to a scratch-and-dent grocery store in downtown Seattle might just justify SKS's extravagant plastic packaging.

These happened to be mildly "coffee flavor" ("perisa kopi"), but the manufacturer also offers original and pandan flavors.

Xôi Lá Cẩm II

 

 

 

 

 

Xôi Lá Cẩm
Lam's Seafood $1.50

More usually bright purple from the addition of magenta plant leaves, xôi lá cẩm is a sweet-and-savory Vietnamese snack of tinted glutinous rice topped with shredded coconut, toasted sesame seeds, velvety mung bean paste, and salt.  A taco-like format makes this particular variation a little more user-friendly by encasing the extremely sticky steamed rice in an edible rice flour wafer. 

Buko Pandan Polvorones

Polvorones
Aling Conching at Seafood City, $1.99/10

Based on a Spanish cookie named for its dusty texture, these Filipino polvorones are bite-sized blocks of compressed flour, milk powder, sugar, and butter, given a faintly tropical flavor with the addition of buko (young coconut) and pandan (screwpine) extracts. 

Honey Coconut Marshmallows

Honey Coconut Marshmallows
Sweet Coconut Bakery, $7.75/bag

A single bag of fresh honey coconut marshmallows from Hazel Lao's Sweet Coconut Bakery can cancel out a lifetime's reluctant memories of stale, chalky Stay Pufts.  Hazel uses honey instead of corn syrup, and dusts her marshmallows with velvety shredded coconut instead of cottonmouth-inducing starch.  The plus-sized squares are as plump as a toddler's tummy, meaning that you don't have to dissolve them in cocoa or melt them over a fire to render them edible. 

Tet Treats

Banh Kep La Dua (above)
Hue Ky Mi Gia, $1.50

Che Ba Mau (below)
Hue Ky Mi Gia, $3.00

Originally opened in Saigon in 1959, the Hue Ky Mi Gia noodle restaurant now has a massive menu and two Seattle-area locations--but only at a temporary stall at Seattle Center's Tet Festival does Hue Ky Mi Gia dish up these New Year's delicacies.   Banh kep la dua is special waffle that gets its color and aroma from the leaves of the screwpine or pandan plant.  Che ba mau is a drinkable dessert:  iced coconut milk with brown sugar syrup, red beans, and chewy green noodles made from rice flour and--again--that addictive pandan extract. 

Nata de Coco

Nata de Coco
Chakoh, $1.68/jar

In the Philippines, around a third of the population makes a living from coconut-related activities and products.  Known affectionately as the "tree of life", the coconut palm yields an astonishing range of goods, from buttons and building materials to a store's-worth of edibles including coconut flesh, cream, milk, jam, curd, sugar, flour, and oil.  

One of the simplest coconut products is the basis for one of the most complicated.  To make coconut water all you do is poke a hole or two through the hull and pour out the refreshing drink sloshing around inside.  To make nata de coco, you combine that water with a specific bacteria, acetobacter xylinium, and let it ferment.  The bacterial colony produces a thick, squishy mat of coconut-flavored cellulose.  Cleaned, sweetened, and cut into pieces, that gel is a high-fiber, low-fat delicacy enjoyed in drinks, pudding, fruit salad, or shaved ice desserts.  

Although nata de coco is Spanish for "coconut cream", these cubes have a uniquely rubbery texture.  Nata de coco is chewier than agar, less sticky than tapioca, and much tastier than an eraser.

Punjab Sweets

Mithai
Punjab Sweets, $4.75-10.99 per pound

When food writer Jeffrey Steingarten compares Indian sweets to cosmetics, I'm with him--but only up to a point. While he concludes that, ”The taste and texture of face creams belong in the boudoir, not on the plate,” I'd happily eat these rich and luxuriously perfumed desserts in any room of the house. 

Aptly enough, the glass cases (below) full of housemade mithai (literally "sweet things") at Pujab Sweets in Kent are as artfully arranged as eyeshadow samples at Sephora. This small shop regularly makes more than 20 different varieties, including (above, from top) besan (creamy yet earthy fudge with toasted chickpea flour), rose burfi (delicately floral fudge), rasgulla (fresh cheese soaked in syrup), coconut roll, and kalakand, (a moist but crumbly cream cake).  

The most prevalent ingredients are dairy products such as whole milk, cream, cheese, and ghee (clarified butter), and a wide range of grains, nuts, and pulses, which are used both whole and ground into flour.  Cooks can manipulate the flavor of these staple ingredients by cooking or toasting them, or by adding ingredients like coconut, rosewater, cardamom, saffron, or chocolate.  Finally, the mithai are formed with care--balls are rolled by hand, sheets are cut into regular rectangles or diamonds--and perhaps given a finishing touch, such as a sprinkle of crushed nuts or a patch of edible silver leaf. 

Mithai are an essential part of many Indian occasions and observances; although many recipes are achievable for home cooks, the labor involved, multiplied by the quantities required for big events, add up to a strong demand for professionally-made mithai.  Since 2001 the Kent valley community has been able to count on Punjab Sweets, a combination confectionery and vegetarian restaurant begun by Iqbal and Gurmit Dha and Iqbal's brother Jasbir Rai and now helmed by the Dhas' daughter, Harpreet Gill.  You can order hundreds of pieces for your wedding or Diwali celebration, or pick up a small assortment to try with your afternoon tea. 

Punjab Sweets
23617 104th Ave SE C  Kent, WA 98031
253 / 859-3236

Bánh Bò Hấp

Bánh bò hấp
White Center Supermarket, $1.25 

 Bánh bò, or "cow cakes", are the Vietnamese version of a steamed rice cake that originated in China.  Bánh bò batter includes rice flour, coconut milk, sugar, and a leavener--traditionally yeast, but baking powder is sometimes used as a shortcut--which causes the batter to bubble dramatically when cooked.  The resulting texture is as spongy as beef liver, earning these cakes their unexpected name.  

Baked bánh bò nướng has a thin golden crust and is usually cut into wedges before serving.  Steamed bánh bò hấp are usually smaller, round, and colorful; natural extracts of pandanus or magenta plant produce pastel green or purple, whereas the neon hues of the banh bo pictured hint at artificial food coloring.  As sold in Seattle's Asian groceries, bánh bò hấp come snuggled onto a deli tray along with a tiny cup of creamy dipping sauce (coconut milk thickened with tapioca flour). 

White Center Supermarket
9828 15th Ave SW
Seattle, WA
206/768-8087

Coco Rico

Coco Rico

As a genre, "tropical" drinks tend to feature a half-dozen garish flavors skewered together by a tiny umbrella (real or implied). Not so Coco Rico, a single-note coconut soda so stripped down it's almost shy.

First produced in Puerto Rico in the 1930s, Coco Rico is clear but creamy, fizzy but soft, aromatic but without suntan lotion overtones. Singles are $0.89 at Rising Sun Produce in Seattle.

Chè chuối

Chè chuối
Tan Tan, $2

Strip malls and pudding have one great quality in common: they both remind me not to judge solely on appearances. In a nondescript strip mall in Vancouver, WA you'll find Tan Tan, a family-run restaurant serving fresh Vietnamese food and desserts so palpably homemade you could imagine a mom whipping them up to welcome her kids back from a hard day at kindergarten.

Chilling in a glass case by the door, the desserts mostly fall into the "chè" category of soupy or pudding-like Vietnamese sweets. On any given day there might be cơm rượu (rice balls in sweet rice wine), bukopandan (a sweet tofu tinted green pandanus leaf), Vietnamese yogurt, chè bắp (sweet corn, sticky rice, and coconut milk), or chè đậu trắng (black eyed peas, sticky rice, and coconut milk). All the blobs, lumps, and cloudy liquids are prepacked into clear plastic cups.

Slightly greyish and pocked with dark splotches, chè chuối may not be much to look at, but like all great puddings it offers an experience all the more transcendent for being unexpected. Sweet-tart slices of fresh banana and succulent spheres of tapioca swim in thick, silky, sweetened coconut milk. Tan Tan even provides a garnish of crushed, roasted peanuts, thoughtfully packaged in a tiny ziploc bag so that they stay fresh and crisp until the moment comes to provide the perfect counterpoint to all that unctuous richness.

Tan Tan
Ste A3316 SE 123rd Ave
Vancouver, WA
360/892-3400

Dairy Free Mochi

Dairy Free Mochi
Trader Joe's, $3.49/6

It wasn't so long ago that mochi was unknown in most of the US. I was introduced to the pounded rice confection by an Asian friend in college and went to on eat my body weight in the stuff on trips to Japan. I was always surprised that Americans hadn't fallen hard for a treat that's delicious, relatively healthy, and not so far removed from rice cakes. Even as sushi mania swept the country and raw fish and seaweed became every 5-year-old's favorite food, mochi continued to lurk in the shadows. Some people have told me that it wasn't so much the mochi they couldn't stomach, but the sweetened bean paste that's a standard filling.

Then came ice cream mochi, nuggets of ice cream inside a puffy mochi jacket: red bean flavor for the traditionalist, a dozen choices for everyone else. Suddenly mochi was on everyone's lips--and mochi starch on everyone's faces.

The real irony of ice cream mochi hadn't occured to me until I saw the "Dairy Free Mochi" in the freezer at Trader Joe's: the vast majority of Asians are lactose intolerant. The TJ's treats are filled with a coconut-based ice cream and come in three flavors: coconut, mango, and chocolate. They're rich and creamy and more than tasty enough to induce the lactose-intolerant to join the eat-a-box-of-ice-cream-mochi-in-a-single-sitting club.

The faux ice cream was fine but what really struck me was the mochi: slippery and dense, it was unlike any mochi I'd ever eaten. A look at the ingredients revealed that what they're calling "mochi" isn't mochi at all: "mochi starch" is composed of tapioca starch, water, coconut milk, sugar, and flavoring. A little misleading, sure, but by genercizing the concept of "mochi" Trader Joe's is actually jumping on a very Japanese bandwagon.

Mochi, the doughy confection, takes its name from mochigome, the glutinous "sweet" rice that is traditionally steamed and pounded to produce it. Other starches have since been used to produce non-rice variations on mochi, such as fern-based warabi mochi and kudzu-based kuzu mochi. One thing that these and many other foods have in common is a particular and pleasing type of chewiness--a quality known in Japanese as "mochimochi".

Trader Joe's Dairy Free, Mochigome Free Mochimochi Mochi: yum.

Custard Pumpkin

Custard Pumpkin

My first-ever Thai meal was at Sawatdee in St. Paul, MN, and I capped off a good dinner with a great dessert: a slice of rich, spongy custard embedded with diced pumpkin. Since that day I've rarely passed up a chance to eat Thai custard, preferably cooked inside a hollowed-out pumpkin, and served by the slice with a side of coconut black sticky rice.

Since I don't always have a retail source, I resort to making my own about once a year, usually around Thanksgiving when the prevalence of pumpkins acts as a mouth-watering reminder. My results have been mixed. True Thai custard calls for duck eggs and palm sugar, so my chicken egg and cane sugar version is bound to be a bit off. For such a short recipe, it also contains a daunting number of variables, from the size and moisture content of the pumpkin, to the volume and freshness of the eggs, to the eccentricities of whatever ersatz steaming contraption I've rigged up. Added to that, I tend to try a different recipe every time, which I realize is not the best approach in terms of trouble-shooting. Accordingly, over the years my "custard pumpkins" have overflowed, fallen, or failed to set--and on one dramatic occasion, the pumpkin sprang a leak and bled out all over the steamer.

But still, this stuff is so good and--theoretically--so simple, that by the time pumpkin season rolls around I'm always ready to try again. Here's what I tried this year:

Slice the top off one smallish kabocha or sugarpie pumpkin (for reference, that's a salad-sized plate in the photo above) and scoop out the guts. Pop the pumpkin into whatever steamer you prefer (I set it on a steel steamer basket inside a crockpot), add water and get the steam going. If you have room you can put the pumpkin lid as well. Mix 1c coconut milk, 1c brown sugar, 1/2 tsp vanilla extract, and 1/2 tsp cinnamon. In another bowl, whisk 4 eggs until foamy. Gently combine the eggs and coconut milk mixture and pour into the pumpkin; ideally the liquid should be pretty close to the top of the opening (the contents will rise and then fall) but I'm never sure what to do if it isn't. Steam until the custard is completely set and the pumpkin is soft but not mushy. Cool, slice into wedges, and serve.

Custard pumpkin 2010 might have been a little short and oddly lumpy, but it was quite delicious. I already have my eye on this recipe for custard pumpkin 2011.

Himmelska

Himmelska
Svedala Bakery, $2

When the Svedala Bakery's tiny stall in Pike Place Market shut down last November, I feared I'd seen the last of their impeccable mazarin, biskvi, katalan, and limpa. I was thrilled to rediscover Svedala at the Thursday night Queen Anne Farmers' Market. Although under new ownership, Svedala is still turning out homestyle Swedish treats using traditional recipes and high-quality ingredients. I celebrated with a himmelska, a thin slab of fudgy brownie topped with a lacy layer of caramelized coconut macaroon.

Svedala's baked goods can also be found at some Whole Foods. And on Fridays, Svedala sells smörgåsar sandwiches at Seattle's Swedish Cultural Center.

Xoi Nep Than

Xoi Nep Than

Mekong Grocery, $1.65

I recently took a joyride on Seattle's new light-rail train, which currently runs from downtown to almost Seatac airport (the airport terminal is due to open soon, followed by more northern stations). It was a great ride--smooth enough for my creaky bones, but bumpy enough to delight David, a talkative 12-year-old fellow joyrider seated across the aisle (he was so adorably excited to take his first train trip that he high-fived the ticket inspectors).

Somehow rocketing along either far above or far below ground level messes with my internal map, so it wasn't until the trip back towards town that I realized the Mount Baker station is mere blocks from one of my favorite Asian shops, the Mekong Rainier Grocery. When I was housesitting in the neighborhood several years ago I made almost daily trips for single-serving portions of spongy duck egg custard, cut in thick golden slabs and laid across a little bed of black sticky rice cooked with coconut milk.

Alas, things have changed. The Mekong is bigger and more bustling, but the slabs of custard are no more. The salesgirl I asked said that it just didn't sell well enough (starting the moment my housesitting gig ended, presumably). So I had a pack of xoi nep than instead; the same mass of coconut black rice, but topped with a schmear of sweetened mung bean paste and sprinkled with flaked coconut. Not quite as luscious as custard, but good enough fuel for a train trip.

Mekong Rainier Grocery

3400 Rainier Ave S

Seattle, WA

Thrive Chocolate Mousse

Chocolate Mousse
Thrive, $3.75/serving at Bite of Seattle

The first thing I did upon arriving at "Bite of Seattle" was ride a roller coaster. It was one of those enclosed boxes that rocks around on pistons so the occupants feel like they're lurching and swooping in synch with a computer-generated image projected on a wraparound screen. The line was short and the attendants promised air conditioning.

The last time I rode in one of these roller-boxes the premise was a rollicking ride through a low-gravity Martian ore mine. This time the theme was atherosclerosis.

After 5 minutes of buffeting against plaque-clogged arteries and ricocheting off blood clots, I wasn't in the mood for many of Seattle's sweetest, greasiest, and cheesiest bites. I was delighted to find a booth run by Thrive, a new-ish Seattle restaurant featuring fresh, organic, and raw ingredients. Their chocolate mousse is also gluten-free and vegan, an enjoyably unctuous fr0th of coconut milk, raw cacao, agave syrup, and cashews, with just enough sea salt to underline the rich chocolate flavor.

Thrive
1026 NE 65th St #A-102
Seattle, WA
206/525-0300

Vietnamese Coconut Cake

Vietnamese Coconut Cake

Saigon Deli, $1.50

Another Saigon Deli sliced cake, this one is even moister and more coconutty than banh bo nuong, and again it has that plump texture that points to rice or tapioca flour. Sadly, I was in too much of a rush to ask what it's called and a Google search of "coconut vietnamese cake" is just too overwhelming. Does anyone out there know what this cake is called? Or where I might find a recipe?