Namkhaeng sai

Shaved ice heaped over toppings put in the glass first, with a syrup poured at the table.

Vegetarian, but not vegan — contains dairy (evaporated milk).

Ingredients

syrup

• 150 g palm sugar
• 150 ml water
• 2 pandan leaves
• 0.25 teaspoon salt

to build

• 1.2 kg finely shaved ice
• 200 ml evaporated milk
• 150 g cooked red beans, sweetened
• 150 g jackfruit, in strips
• 100 g grass jelly, diced
• 100 g sweetcorn kernels
• 100 g tapioca pearls, cooked

Method

1. THE TOPPINGS GO IN FIRST, UNDER THE ICE. That is the opposite of how it looks: the glass is filled with beans, jackfruit, jelly and corn, and the ice is heaped over the top. Scattered on top of the ice instead, everything slides off and the last half of the glass is plain ice.
2. THE ICE MUST BE SHAVED, NOT CRUSHED. Shaved ice is soft, takes up syrup and packs into a dome; crushed ice is hard lumps that the syrup runs straight through.
3. Syrup: palm sugar, water, pandan and salt simmered 8 minutes until slightly thickened. Cool it completely and chill it hard.
4. The salt in the syrup is what keeps it from being flatly sweet against a glass of nothing but ice.
5. Chill the glasses too. A room-temperature glass melts the bottom third before it reaches the table.
6. Drain every topping well. Syrup from a tin of beans or jackfruit thins everything and makes the glass watery.
7. Build: a spoonful of each topping in the bottom, then shaved ice heaped well above the rim and pressed lightly into a dome.
8. Syrup poured over at the table, then the evaporated milk over that in a slow stream.
9. Serve immediately with a long spoon. There is no version of this that waits five minutes.

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