New Recipe: Coconut Sticky Rice & Mango

This is a Thai dessert.  I had it at a Thai restaurant in Kemah, Texas called Mer Lion and wanted to recreate it at home.

Ingredients:
Serves 6-8

2 cups Japanese sweet rice (regular white rice will not work)
2 1/8 cups of water
1 can of unsweetened Thai coconut milk
4 Tablespoons sugar
4 pinches of salt
optional pinch of Saffron

Step 1)
Combine the rice and water in a glass bowl and soak for 1 hour.

Step 2)
After the rice and water have soaked for at least an hour, put a plate on top of the bowl and microwave on high heat for 7 minutes.  Mix the rice and make sure it's nice and soft.  Let the rice sit with the plate on top while you work on Step 3.

See the plate on top?

The is rice cooked perfectly

Step 3)
Simmer the coconut milk, sugar, & salt on medium heat until it thickens up a bit.  Make sure you stir the coconut milk often so that it doesn't curdle.  This is where I added the saffron.  You can see little pieces of it in this picture.

The recipe didn't call for saffron but I've always wanted to try saffron in a recipe and I figured it would work in a recipe like this.  I can't say that it tasted any different with the saffron than without it.  I'm not sure what saffron tastes like.  I just know it's rare and expensive.  This tiny little jar cost $17.49.

Saffron is so rare and expensive because each flower's stigmas need to be collected by hand and there are only a few stigmas per flower.



Step 4)
Get a nice, ripe mango.  Mangos should be a little soft to the touch but not too much.  This mango is perfectly ripe.  Start slicing the mango while the coconut milk is simmering.  But make sure to keep stirring the coconut milk about every minute or so.

Step 5)

The coconut milk should have thickened up some after simmering.  Pour it onto the sweet rice and mix it in.

Step 6)
Scoop a half cup of coconut sticky rice onto a plate and place the sliced mangos on top.