Burmese · Dessert
Sanwin Makin
- Intermediate
- 35 min
- roughly 1 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
Leads with richness that coats and comforts, a sweet edge rounding the corners, with a bitter-edged char at the rim.
Ingredients
- 250 g coarse semolina
- 400 ml coconut milk
- 250 ml water
- 200 g palm sugar, chopped
- 3 eggs, beaten
- 80 g ghee
- 3 g salt
- 25 g white poppy seeds
The skills inside
Dry-pan toasting: spices, seeds and nutsThe wobble & the skewer: testing a bake
The words inside
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · dairy · egg
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Dry toast the semolina in a wide pan over medium heat for about 8 minutes, until it smells of biscuit and has gone straw coloured; do not let it brown. 8 min
- Melt the palm sugar into the coconut milk, water and salt, then pour that onto the semolina off the heat, whisking as you go so no lumps set.
- Return it to medium heat and stir without stopping for about 15 minutes, until the mass pulls away from the pan in one lump and a spoon stands up in it. 15 min
- Slide the pan off the heat, beat in the ghee, and wait until the mixture has stopped steaming before working in the eggs a third at a time.
- Spread it 3 cm deep in a greased tin, scatter the poppy seeds, and bake at 190 C (375 F) until the top is mahogany, blistered and firm to a fingertip.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Dry-pan toasting: spices, seeds and nuts 70 recipes
- A single layer on dry metal with nothing added: no fat, and nothing else sharing the pan or the tray and competing for the heat.
- It is kept moving: shaken, stirred, or turned. Anything left still scorches on the face touching the metal while the rest of it is barely warm.
- It is judged by smell before sight: once it is fragrant there are seconds left, not minutes, and the nose reaches that point well before the colour does.
- It leaves the pan the instant it is done, onto a cold surface. A hot pan keeps toasting whatever stays in it, and carryover here is the difference between done and ruined.
- The colour is even and light rather than patchy, with nothing black at the edges: one scorched piece taints the whole quantity it is ground into.
Where it goes wrong It was left alone for a moment while something else was attended to. Dry heat has no margin: the pieces against the metal go from fragrant to acrid inside a minute, and the bitterness cannot be picked back out of a ground mixture.
The wobble & the skewer: testing a bake 135 recipes
- Tested at the true centre and the thickest point, not at the convenient edge: the edge is done long before the answer is.
- The skewer comes out as the recipe describes, clean and dry or carrying the stated moist crumb, and it does the same on a second test in a different spot.
- The wobble is read in motion: nudged, the centre moves as one set mass with a faint tremble, rather than a liquid ripple travelling across the surface.
- The other signs agree with the test: risen and just shrinking from the sides, the top set and dry to a light touch with no wet gloss on it.
- Pressed lightly at the middle it springs back and leaves no lasting dent.
Where it goes wrong It was judged on the clock and on how the edges looked, so a centre still liquid went to the rack and sank as it cooled, a dense wet seam under a perfectly browned top.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Demi-sec Champagne
- Also Right
- Off-dry Chenin (Vouvray)
- From the Taps
- Fruited sour
- Zero-Proof
- Coconut water with lime
Tropical sweetness wants bubbles or Chenin’s honeyed acid: richness met with lift, not more weight.
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