How To Cook That: Thai Coconut Sticky Rice

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Multicultural Children’s Book Day’s mission is to not only raise awareness for the kid’s books that celebrate diversity, but to get more of these of books into classrooms and libraries. The MCCBD team’s mission to spread the word and raise awareness about the importance of diversity in children’s literature. Our young readers need to see themselves within the pages of a book and experience other cultures, languages, traditions and religions within the pages of a book. The co-creators of this unique event are Mia Wenjen from Pragmatic Mom and Valarie Budayr from Jump Into a Book/Audrey Press. You can find a bio for Mia and Valarie here.

When we are back in Hawaii, we teach our kids about foreign countries by visiting restaurants, or making recipes they’d like to try. We are looking for a great, authentic Thai restaurant on Oahu (so, if you know of one, please let us know!, and until then, I’ve resorted to teaching the kids about Thai cuisine right in our kitchen. I’ve visited Thailand back in the day, and know how spicy a lot of the cuisine can be, so for their tummies, we opted to make dessert!

Coconut Sticky Rice is a popular Thai dessert, and is one of my favorite’s mainly because it isn’t extremely sweet. The coconut cream and mango flavors both pair wonderfully together, and are the perfect ending to a spicy Thai meal.

• 3-4 Frozen mango slices, thawed
• 1 cup Thai glutinous rice, soaked and covered in cold water for at least 3 hours
• 1 cup coconut cream
• 1/4-1/2 cup sugar (depending on your taste)
• 1/4 tsp salt

1. Rinse the rice until water runs clear. Drain & pour rice into a steaming bowl. Place heatproof dish on a rack in a wok filled with boiling water. Cover and steam the rice for 30 minutes.
2. The rice will be ready when the grains turn translucent. Test by biting into a grain – if it’s not hard, it’s ready. The rice shouldn’t be extremely soft, because you want it to soak up the coconut cream that’s added later.
3. Turn off the heat, leave rice in the wok to warm.
4. In a saucepan, combine sugar, coconut cream & salt. Stir until sugar has dissolved and then bring the mixture to a boil. Pour in the steamed rice, and stir to combine.
5. Remove from heat and stir every 10 minutes until the sauce has been absorbed by the rice. Once that’s done, the rice is ready to be served!
6. Scoop a serving into a bowl. Place sliced mangoes on the rice. Serve!

Notes

• Since mangoes aren’t in season, we opted to use frozen slices, which was tasty but a good ripe mango would have been perfect.
• Instead of mangoes, we also used canned lychees, which was an interesting take on the classic. Don’t be afraid to experiment!