Thai Sweets: Khao Niew Tu Rien

I’ve posted about sticky rice with mango, perhaps the most famous of all Thai sweets, but let me now introduce you to sticky rice with durian, khao niew tu rien. This stuff is two turn tables and a microphone. F’realz.

Soupy sweet durian coconut sauce over sticky rice. This is the classic khao niew tu rien, and while it’s completely delicious, I often find it too sweet for my taste.

Here’s how you’ll usually find it sold—in two separate baggies—one for the sauce and one for the sweet sticky rice. As you can see, I’m able to find it for 20 baht here in Chanthaburi (durian capital of Thailand) but elsewhere you’ll likely pay anywhere from 30–50 baht.

Just some of the goodies on offer at my favorite durian stall in a talat (market) in Chanthaburi. The picture on the left shows my preferred durian and sticky rice combo: no sauce, just a soft pod of durian and a little heap of sweet sticky rice.

Here’s a little bowl with my requested topping of crunchy, mildly salty fried yellow mung beans. These are often served with sticky rice and mango, not durian, but I sometimes enjoy the textural contrast and find the salty mung beans a pleasing counterpart to an often too-sweet khao niew tu rien.

Though I don’t usually go for the sauce, this was a pretty delicious combo. Fresh durian in addition to the classic khao niew tu rien.

 

Before.

After.

 

Ready for consumption. Trust me when I say this little bowl of goodness kept me satiated for a full seven hours. Which is why I actually don’t eat khao niew tu rien very often; it sits like a brick in my stomach. The most divine, delicious, obsession-inducing brick ever.

Thai Street Food: Bua Loy Nam King

Bua Loy Nam King is a refreshing break from coconut-heavy Thai sweets (though it’s doubtful such a break is ever required). This sweet originated in China, which might explain why it contains no form of coconut at all. Instead it features mochi-like balls of sticky rice filled with a lightly sweetened black sesame paste, swimming in a hot ginger tea soup.

The broth (nam king) is intensely gingery and I always request that it be left unsweetened. As such, it is bold and just spicy enough to be mildly uncomfortable. The bua loy (sticky rice flour dumplings) are glossy and toothsome (I’m kicking myself a little for using that word, but if the shoes fits…), while the black sesame filling is grainy, intense, and rich.

Bua Loy Nam King, despite being served piping hot, is always a light and refined snack, though to be honest, I’ve yet to refine my manner of eating it. With just a few bua loy swimming in the nam king I’m not sure what the proper ratio of rice balls to ginger soup should be. Should I break the bua loy in half or thirds and scoop up as much nam king as I can, being sure to mix both elements in each bite? I’ve tried this, but to be frank, there’s just too much nam king to compose balance bites. So I invariably slurp the spicy, warming ginger infusion to a manageable level, then savor each wonderfully chewy bua loy. The perfectly sweetened, slightly earthy bites of sticky rice dumplings and black sesame are worth savoring.

One bowl of Bua Loy Nam King usually costs around 20 baht ($0.67).

Street Food: Khanom Gui Chai

Recently, I was walking through the streets of Chanthaburi with my friend Jan. Jan was cycling from Bangkok to Cambodia, into Vietnam and Laos, then back to Bangkok, and he happened to pass through C-Buri on my day off, so I caught the songthaew into town to see him. It was lunchtime, the sun was blazing, we were hungry, and the “Muslim Food” restaurant I had banked on was closed. What were two veg*ns to do? If I had been on my own, I would have stuffed my face with a few naturally vegan Thai sweets, but in Jan’s presence I felt compelled to act civilized, to eat a savory lunch with, you know, vegetables and nutrients and shit.

The truth is, though sweet street snacks are widely available, it’s not always easy to find savory vegan food in Thailand. In fact, I can only think of a few options, and luckily we stumbled across one of them.

I’ve searched high and low for the proper Thai name for these, and the closest I’ve found is Khanom Gui Chai. Gui chai mean chinese chives, so this name only really describes one of the three types of dumplings we stumbled upon that day. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you what was in the other two dumplings except to say that one was a light green filling and the other yellow.

While Thailand may not have an abundance of savory vegan street food, it does have a very easy way to identify vegan (as opposed to vegetarian) food. Kin Jae (or Gin Jae) is strict vegetarian, with no eggs or dairy. No strong flavors like garlic or onion or cilantro either, unfortunately, but I’m happy do without in exchange for knowing I’m not accidentally eating fish sauce or eggs or gelatin.

So when Jan and I saw a woman frying up batches of these dumplings on a street stall in a narrow alley, I pointed and asked, “Nii kin jae, na?” and she confirmed that they were indeed vegan. She was also selling some fresh spring rolls, but they were “mai jae”.

She served us a few khanom gui chai hot from the wide flat griddle and gave us two accompanying dipping sauces—one clear and vinegary but flecked with spicy chilis, the other dark and sweet like molasses.

The skin, a translucent and thick rice flour dough, was pleasantly chewy and crispy from the heat of the griddle and the filling of chinese chives was verdant and only mildly pungent. Chinese chives are much milder than their Western counterparts, tasting something like a clove of cooked garlic mellowed out with a mess of spinach.

Here’s a simple recipe to try that seems pretty versatile. If you’re in Thailand, these can be a little hard to track down unless you happen to know where a street vendor sets up. The good news is, once you’ve located the vendor, she’s likely to show up selling the same food in the same place at the same time every day of the week.

Six of these little guys cost us 20 baht ($0.65).

Thai Cotton Candy Burrito

Known as Roti Sai Mai, or, as I’ve dubbed it, the Thai Cotton Candy Burrito. I should confess, though. I’ve never actually tried it as it’s basically sugar wrapped inside more sugar. I have heard it’s delicious and I can verify that it certainly is pretty and would make a great snack for a pride party or parade! Just look at the pastel rainbow!

The vendor starts with bags and bags of spun pastel-hued cotton candy. Then, using a roti or crepe mixture made of rice flour and colored lime green with pandan leaves, she quickly cooks the thinnest little roti, using a spatula to scrape away the excess dough. Watch the video below to see her in action. I’d like to learn more about that dough; look how it stays in her hand like a wobbling blob of silly putty!

When you purchase roti sai mai, you get a stack of roti and a bag of cotton candy. The assembly is easy: just fill your roti with the cotton candy, roll it up, and eat. I think I’ll have to try it soon because who am I kidding? I like my sugar with a side of sugar, thank you very much.

Sweet Sticky Rice with Mango

I think khao niew ma muang, or sticky rice with mango, must be the most famous of all Thai sweets. And don’t get me wrong, it deserves that fame, especially when the mango is perfectly ripe and in season.

Even without fruit, sweet sticky rice is a first-rate treat, but with a juicy and purely sweet mango it becomes something divine. The sticky rice is steamed first then mixed with salted coconut sauce until the rice absorbs all the sauce and becomes plump and shiny.

When you buy sweet sticky rice in the market, it comes premade with an additional bag of salty sweet coconut sauce. When you’re ready to eat, simply pour the sauce over the rice and cut mango and top with some crunchy and salty fried yellow mung beans (not pictured).

In the market, sticky rice with mango will cost around 30 baht ($1.00) but if you have access to your own kitchen, I suggest buying sweet sticky rice and cutting your own accompanying mango when you’re ready to eat it. For a change, you could try using fresh pineapple or, my favorite, durian! If you want to make khao niew ma muang at home, this looks like a good recipe with clear instructions. Usually tapioca starch is not used, so feel free to leave that out if you prefer.

Thai Street Food: Khao Niao Tat

How many times can I say something is my favorite until you stop believing me?

This is another of my favorite Thai sweets. It’s the perfect bite-size snack and again has that great mix of sweet and salty and creamy.

Khao Niao Tat is a base of coconut sticky rice topped with a sweet and salty coconut cream custard. There’s a scattering of black beans throughout. It is a great mix of textures, from the chewy sticky rice to the creamy and soft custard and the occasional bite of black bean. The flavor is phenomenal as the salt helps to cut through the sweetness. I’m always amazed at how Thai sweets use just three simple ingredients—rice, coconut, and sugar—to create a whole multitude of delicacies.

You can buy Khao Niao Tat by the square, each one about half the size of my palm, for only 5 baht (less than $0.17) and they come wrapped and packaged in a little banana leaf pouch. Here’s a recipe in case you want to try making it at home.

Thai Street Food: Kalamae

The first few times I walked down this row of shops on the lakefront in Chanthaburi, I was distracted by the smell, pervasive by nature, of durian around me. Like a woman obsessed, I only had eyes for the large, muddy brown, hedgehog-like fruit. It wasn’t until my third time walking down the street that I noticed a purely sweet smell which cut through the complex durian aroma. I looked to my right and saw a long banquet-like table displaying an array of sticky Thai sweets. Behind the table, a young man stood on a chair and stirred a wok filled with a gooey caramelized mass known as kalamae.

Kalamae is a naturally vegan Thai version of the traditional French caramel. It is made (as with most Thai sweets) of a combination of sticky rice , sugar, and coconut. It is amazing how these three basic ingredients can combine to create a multitude of desserts all of varying tastes and textures. In the case of kalamae, sticky rice flour, palm sugar, and coconut milk are cooked and stirred constantly until the perfect gooey and luscious texture is obtained.

You can find plain kalamae (colored with burnt coconut husks) or a green kalamae (colored with pandan leaves), topped with either peanuts or white sesame seeds. Especially for vegans who miss eating caramel, kalamae is a wonderful, indulgent sweet. I find it tastier than its cream- and butter-laden counterpart.

20 baht or $0.70 for a palm-size packet.

Thai Street Food: Khanom Krok

I’m not going to be blowing any minds when I say that a specialty of Thai food is balancing many flavors in one dish. In fact, there’s a well-known amuse bouche of sorts called a one bite salad which combines sweet, salty, sour, spicy, and bitter in one delicious leaf-encased bite.

My forays into Thai street food, though, are necessarily limited by my veganism. There are very few savory dishes, if any at all, which don’t have any animal-derived ingredients. Luckily for me and my giant sweet tooth, a majority of dishes in the Thai sweet pantheon are vegan by default. With Khanom Krok in particular, and its perfect balance of texture and flavors, I feel I’ve won some kind of delicious-food lottery. Where are my balloons and confetti?

Khanom Krok is made in two layers with two slightly different batters. And as you can hear me annoyingly yammer on about, the first is rice-based and is used to give each little pancake a firm outer crust. The second layer is mainly coconut cream and sugar, and it never fully firms up, resulting in a marvelous contrast of textures. The outer crust is firm and even a bit crispy, while the creamy inside is hot and custard-like. Ha. There’s a reason it’s called food porn.

I enjoy the contrast of textures, but what makes Khanom Krok one of my favorite Thai sweets is the balance of sweet and salty flavors (I guess the girl can leave the U.S. but can never annihilate those American taste buds). An essential part of the coconut cream is a distinct salted edge which really enhances the richness and sweetness of the pudding-like center. Add to each little pancake a few kernels of corn, a sprinkling of chives and you have the perfect mix of savory, creamy, and sweet.

Stay tuned for more Thai street food. Though I think I should give up the pretense and call it what it is: Thai sweets. I’ve got a video of vegan caramel being made and am in the process of hunting down my favorite sweet of all: sticky rice with durian. Yum.