Passport & Plate - Mứt dừa - Sugar-preserved slide-cut coconut
Vietnam | Thursday, March 5, 2015 | 3 photos
Ingredients
The special thing about this recipe is that it is very easy to make and you can add up nearly every favors you want. Therefore, I will just list out the essential ingredients for it. This recipe is also made with a large amount because it is used widely and the coconut will shrink anyway:
- 1kg of coconut rice (the white inner part of the coconut)
- 1kg of sugar
- 3 tbsp of solid milk (sorry, I'm a sweet lover)
- 3 tbsp of coffee (for the smells)
- A friend to taste it and prevent you from eating
- And that's all :)
How to prepare this recipe:
- First, wash the coconut rice, make sure you remove all the shell sticking to it. Then, slide the coconut rice into bars that fit your style. I'd prefer finger size of the slides so I have more at one bite. Don't worry about water remains after you wash it, it won't affect at all.
- Next, move the slides you've just cut into a suitable pot and pour down the sugar. 500g of sugar will do fine. Adjust to 750g if your coconut slides is too big. Close the pot with a fit lid and leave it for the sugar. It will takes at least 2 hours for the sugar's resolve process to make the coconut rice sweet and soften them. It's time to use your friend (I told you to prepare one right?) or do whatever you want. The process will not operate faster anyway, just leave it for the night and come back later.
- After a long time, open your lid and you will have an ocean of water inside the pot, though you didn't allow any water inside (did you?). What a surprise, you coconut rice slides is now sweeten inside and ready. Load the rest of the sugar you prepare into a big pan, pour only all the sugar water from our coconut pot and start the fire.
- This is the tricky part, stir the mixture of sugar continuously and not to let it have any burn. The mixture can change color within just seconds! Decrease the fire when you see the mixture is getting dense and pour all you have in the pot to the fan. After that, pour the solid milk and coffee spoons into it and continue to stir. Keep stirring until the mixture covers the slides like sparkles. Done. Tips for this step is to use some hot water for the mixture so it will not be easily burn (just little). Instead of stirring, you can move all the slides to the rear of the pan, get the water in the middle, and use a ladle to souse the mixture over the slides.
The story behind this recipe
This recipe to special as it is extremely easy to make and easy to eat because you can add countless favors to suit everyone's taste. Moreover, you can also keep it for a long time thanks to the resolve process. I often carry it along during my travels to invite my friends as a home-made gift.
In fact, this dish is only popular during Vietnam's Traditional Lunar new year. Everyone has it in there guest tray. There's a saying "A quid of betel and areca-nut starts the ball rolling" but this snack even boosts the story further and faster. Everyone has it in their home but they will not hesitate to try it to open a comfortable common sense in their guest house. And for the fact that the stirring process and takes up times (also depend on the type of the desire favor you put it), people often gather around the stove to tell story, chit chat with each others while waiting for it to complete. In my case, whenever I see someone makes it, I know that there are about to have some reunions somewhere, or some holidays for gathering are about to come.
Whenever I open a box of this snack, the sweet of it helps me relax and enjoy my personal taste snack. It reminds me of my cozy atmosphere with my family when we all in the kitchen. I still recall how I used to assist my mom in the kitchen. When we made this, I would prepare the ingredients, my sister would do the stirring, my mom was the main chef to observe and rescue us if anything went wrong and my father, who had diabetes, would be the most accurate judge for the sugar. My sister's argument with me about the favors often resulted in 3 different type of favors for this snack, therefore, we hardly made it with small amount but with large portions so we could have different types, fit to everyone taste. My sister often chose strawberry contrast to my decision for chocolate one. But we both ate each other's at the end.
Who I am and why should I be selected:
I am a food lover and an amateur photographer. I love food and its taste so much that I often consider myself as a born-to-eat-person. Though I always keep myself as an acceptable weight, I'd rather let it increase in an exchange for a good dish. Last year I had a traffic accident, not very critical but still non-usual damaged and it taught me to valuate more on your time. Because of that, I treasure the food I have and hardly leave any left in my bowl or plate even if they are not my taste. I want to enjoy the food, do everything I want and life a useful life so I can be ready when the times come. Eating is also a mean of making friends to me. You can share more to a foodholic who has similar taste and continue your travels with them. Therefore, I can not forgive myself if I leave such an amazing opportunity like this pass by.
There are millions of better competitors for this course and I wonder what they will do if they win, but I will spreads all the information about this 1-of-a-life-time chance for my community, friends, lay my hand on every channels I can contact to tell the people how great it is. I will take mountains of pictures about the beautiful Sri Lanka and its delicious culinary and promote them to my friends around the world. I will risk everything I have, commit to the course, do the challenging parts if I have to do or even break my habits in order to be selected for this course.
