Khanom mo kaeng

A dense baked custard thickened with mung bean, finished under fried shallots.

Duck, Egg. Not vegetarian — contains duck.

Ingredients

200 g split mung beans
6 duck eggs
400 ml coconut milk
200 g palm sugar
0.5 teaspoon salt
4 shallots, thinly sliced
4 tablespoons oil
2 pandan leaves

Method

BAKED, AND THICKENED WITH BEAN RATHER THAN BY THE EGG ALONE. The khao niao sangkhaya on this site is a steamed custard that wobbles; this is dense enough to cut into squares and pick up, because cooked mung bean is doing half the setting.
Soak the mung beans 3 hours, then steam them 25 minutes until they crush to paste between finger and thumb. Boiled, they take up water and the custard never firms.
Blend the hot beans with the coconut milk until completely smooth, then press the lot through a sieve. Any grain left here is a grain in the finished custard.
DUCK EGGS IF YOU CAN GET THEM. The yolks are larger and richer and the set is firmer; six hen's eggs plus one extra yolk is the nearest substitute.
Whisk the eggs with the palm sugar and salt BY HAND until the sugar has dissolved. A beater makes foam, and foam bakes into a pale bubbled crust.
Bruise the pandan and squeeze it through the bean mixture, then combine with the eggs and strain again.
Fry the shallots in the oil over a medium heat until deep gold, 6 to 8 minutes, and drain them. They go on at the END, not into the batter.
Pour into a lined tin to 3 cm and bake at 170C for 45 to 50 minutes, until set with the faintest wobble and the top is brown in patches.
Scatter the fried shallots over while it is hot so they stick, and press them lightly in.
Cool completely before cutting. The salt-sweet shallot against the custard is the whole character of it and it sounds wrong until you eat it.

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 Thailand · All recipes