Khanom tom

Boiled rice-flour balls round a caramelised coconut filling, rolled in coconut while wet.

Vegan.

Ingredients

filling

200 g grated coconut
120 g palm sugar
3 tablespoons water
0.25 teaspoon salt

dough

300 g glutinous rice flour
230 ml warm water
2 pandan leaves

to coat

150 g grated coconut
0.25 teaspoon salt

Method

THEY ARE ROLLED IN COCONUT STRAIGHT OUT OF THE WATER, while still wet. That is the only thing that makes it stick. Drained and cooled first, the surface dries to a skin and the coconut falls off on the plate.
Steam the coating coconut with the salt for 5 minutes and let it cool. Raw grated coconut sours within hours and the steaming is what lets these keep until evening.
Filling: palm sugar, water and salt melted in a pan, then the 200 g of coconut in, stirred over a medium heat 10 to 12 minutes until dark, sticky and dry enough to hold a shape when squeezed.
Cool the filling completely and roll it into 2 cm balls. Warm filling melts through the dough as you wrap it.
Dough: squeeze the pandan through the warm water for colour, then work it into the flour a little at a time to a soft dough like modelling clay. Too wet and the balls burst in the water; too dry and they crack as you shape them.
Flatten a walnut of dough in the palm, a filling ball in, and close it over, rolling until the seam is gone. Any gap lets water in.
Drop them into plenty of gently boiling water, a dozen at a time. Stir once so they do not stick to the base.
THEY ARE DONE WHEN THEY FLOAT, plus one more minute. Lifted the moment they rise, the middle is still raw flour.
Straight from the water into the coconut with a slotted spoon, and roll while dripping.
Eat the same day. They go hard overnight and no amount of reheating brings them back.

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