Sweets are not generally my thing. I could possibly get carried away with some decent chocolate or a cheesecake but mostly I crave salty savory flavors. Fern, on the other hand, definitely has a sweet tooth. As we travelled through Thailand we encountered many street vendors selling a wide variety of dessert cakes, usually cut into rectangular servings. Between Fern’s love of sugar and my curiosity, we tried a lot of these little desserts and some of them were really good.
When I refer to them as cakes, it’s mostly because I don’t have a better word for them. There’s a sort of continuum of texture where on one end you have a firm gelatinous consistency, usually brightly colored and flavored with mysterious things, and then it flows into more of a custardy texture with varying amounts of egg and coconut milk and that flows into more of a doughy texture with the inclusion of rice flour, possibly other kinds of flour like tapioca, shredded coconut, and other more solid ingredients, possibly even beans. There are many varieties and it can be very difficult to predict what one is going to taste like based on its appearance. It almost seems as though Thais deliberately craft the appearance of their desserts to be misleading, for example, I would think that a bright pink, red, or orange gelatinous cake would taste like some sort of tropical fruit but that was rarely the case. Often the ones that look like they would be the sweetest aren’t really sweet at all and might be flavored with caramelized onions or dried shrimp, and there are some very eggy custards that are more salty than sweet. In fact many of them aren’t very sweet, but have interesting textures. With these cakes, as well as some other Thai desserts, texture seems to be at least as important as flavor.
We sampled as many different kinds as we could over the course of three different month-long visits to Thailand and there was one variety that stood out over all the others. Fortunately they can be found all over Thailand and we pretty much became addicted to them. It’s a coconut rice cake that I don’t have a proper name for. It’s at the doughy end of the spectrum, dense, moist, chewy, a little bit grainy from the shredded coconut, and it basically just tastes like toasty rich coconut. They get a little bit browned on top adding an even more toasty flavor and a slight crunch on the surface. They’re soooooooooo good. We would buy about six of them at a time and it was a serious exercise in self restraint to not eat them all right away.
It’s all about the coconut.
We spent a good three weeks in Chiang Mai at a small studio apartment that had a kitchen. This gave us the rare opportunity to cook a lot of meals for ourselves and explore the local markets for ingredients, not just prepared foods. It was incredibly fun and interesting (for me, at least) and it gave us a taste of local life and an opportunity to interact with people in a different way. There was a man who ran a stall at our favorite day time wet market and he didn’t speak much English but he made an effort and he was very friendly. We had learned some basic Thai words too so we could manage at markets and people warmed right up when they heard us using Thai numbers for the prices. We went back to him several times for fermented curry pastes, peanuts, coconut milk, and fried pork skins. A large machine toward the back of his space caught my attention. At first I just barely noticed it, and then I noticed that it had coconut all over it, and then I noticed the large pile of chunks of coconut flesh next to it. This machine was almost like a small (but still quite large) version of a wood chipper, and it eventually dawned on me that it’s purpose was to make freshly grated coconut. At the time I was experimenting with some rice porridge breakfasts involving coconut milk, jackfruit seeds (yum), preserved fruits, bananas, and honey. What if I simmered the rice and coconut milk with a nice handful of freshly grated coconut? The time came to visit our man at the market and see the coconut grinding machine in action.
I believe the most common use for this type of coconut is to make home made coconut milk and the man seemed rather surprised when we expressed an interest in the machine. When people don’t expect us to want something communication suddenly becomes much more difficult. After a long “conversation” involving a lot of hand gestures he started up the grinder with a loud whirring sound that only motorized power tools can make, climbed up on a little stool, and started dropping pieces of coconut into the chute. Freshly ground coconut dropped out of the bottom end into a huge bowl. It smelled wonderful. The coconut was not quite as finely ground as flour but it was much finer than the dried shaved coconut that’s commonly available in the US. He scooped up about a kilogram of it into a bag and my mind immediately started racing. What would we do with this much coconut? Fortunately finding a use for it was not a problem. It was moist and sticky, saturated with coconut juice and oil. There was a slight tang which either came from oxidization or possibly the beginning stages of fermentation. I had never tasted coconut like this and it was delicious. Fern and I ended up eating most of it just by itself, squishing small handfuls of it into cohesive lumps and popping them into our mouths. I added copious amounts to the rice porridge and mixed it into some curry sauces to thicken it up. Wonderful. It also made a nice topping for just about anything. Sprinkle some ground coconut, salt, sliced chilies, lime juice, and peanuts on top of a salad or stir-fry for a nice finishing touch.
As with many things, the freshness of ingredients can make all the difference. It occurred to me that our favorite coconut rice cakes were probably made with this kind of coconut, or something very similar. They’re very simple but in the better ones the coconut flavor really shines and the texture makes it especially satisfying to eat. The best coconut cakes that we found were in Phetchaburi. The town seemed to specialize in desserts and their main market was full of them.
One day wandering the streets in Bangkok I noticed a lunch cart that had a big chunk of pork belly in a glass case. It was a long strip and it was partially sliced about every two inches with the browned skin holding the pieces together. From a distance it looked a lot like a row of coconut rice cakes and the similarity was striking. Funny that two wonderful unrelated foods should look so similar. Could it be that the originators of the Thai coconut cake recipe were trying to make it look like pork belly – another beloved food in Thailand? I wouldn’t be surprised.
jim@snorkelbandits.com