Filipina salada (buko pandan)

Buko pandan, coconut and pandan. It’s a sweet, not a real salad.
This is my “agar du jour”, and that’s a luxury one.

It’s as simple as turning pandan leaves into jelly.

I’ve taken 3 leaves for 1/2 liter of water. Made a knot to leaves, brought to a boil, take away from fire. Cut the leaves roughly, still in the water (with scissor). Let 15 minutes.
Sieve 1/2 cup of liquid. Transfer the rest in mixer. Juice.
Add one dose of agar (they use a ressembling seaweed in the Philippines, it’s totally equivalent) to the clear liquid, bring to boil. Pour in it the juice (through a mesh filter), add a little sugar, sweetener. Stir well. Transfer in jelly case. It hardened in 15 minutes.

Cubes of green sweetness. The flavor of pandan is encantly sweet and tropical. Not an hint of bitterness. Like a dream of sticky rice and vanilla.
Then add 1 tablespoon of coconut cream (that you dind floating on top of coconut milk).

Some would add condensed milk or even whipped cream. No thanks, I prefer my (3 (back to back simpler… I confess) serving of the simpler version to one of theirs.
The coconut cream is naturally sweet, if you’re an extremely sweet tooth you can add a little syrup. I promise you, it’s rich enough, and flavor is plentyful. I enjoy it this way. Mmmmmm !

Four fragrances of Southern curries

Now I get appams, what to serve with them ? I mean a nice meal…

4 coconut dishes. The tropical carrots and the shrimp curries are the recipes from Daring Cooks.

Tropical carrots.

Black tiger shrimps in curry.

Okras just reheated in gravy from the shrimps.

Sri Lanka mango curry. recipe found on the blog Edible Garden
That was really sweet and surprising.

Pandan leaves.

The square.
What to say ? Everything was really delicious and went so well together. If you like South-Asian fruity, spicy and herby flavors, you can only adore that meal.

If you missed the pancake episode :
making appam pancakes

Pimp up your rice with pandan and bird food

In today’s rice with a simple variation.
There is what you can see.

Small yellow grains of awa. It’s millet des oiseaux in French, so the name indicates it’s food for the birds. It’s Setaria italica, AKA foxtail millet.