Ampaw
Leftover rice dried hard, puffed in hot oil, and bound into bars with caramel.
Vegan.
Ingredients
- 600 g cooked rice
- 250 g dark muscovado sugar
- 100 ml water
- 0.25 teaspoon salt
- 60 g peanuts, chopped
- oil, for deep frying
Method
- DRIED HARD FIRST, and this takes a day. Spread cooked rice on trays, break up every clump with your fingers, and leave it in the sun or a very low oven until the grains are bone-dry, rattle on the tray and snap rather than bend. Rice with any moisture left in it does not puff -- it just browns.
- In an oven, 90C with the door propped open, 4 to 5 hours, stirred every hour.
- Oil to 200C, hotter than most frying. The puffing is a burst of steam and it needs that heat; at 170C the grains sink and go hard.
- A small handful at a time, in a sieve or basket. They puff within 3 to 5 seconds and must come straight out. Any longer and they colour, and coloured ampaw tastes burnt.
- Drain them on paper and keep them somewhere dry while you do the rest. Do them all before starting the caramel.
- Caramel: muscovado, water and salt in a wide pan, boiled without stirring to 120C, or until a drop in cold water forms a soft ball. 10 to 12 minutes.
- Puffed rice and peanuts in all at once, off the heat, and folded fast with a wooden spoon until every grain is coated. You have about 40 seconds before it stiffens.
- Tip it into an oiled tin and press it down HARD with an oiled flat base. Pressed lightly, the bars crumble when cut.
- Cut into bars while still warm, with an oiled knife, but leave them in the tin until completely cold before lifting them out.
Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.
Filed under Philippines · All recipes