Sri Lankan · Dessert
Watalappan
- Intermediate
- 20 min
- roughly 1 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
Leads with a sweet edge rounding the corners, toasted, nutty warmth throughout, fading in warm spice.
Ingredients
- 200 g kithul jaggery or dark palm sugar, chopped
- 400 ml thick coconut milk
- 5 eggs (250 g)
- 2 g fine salt
- 4 green cardamom pods, ground
- 0.5 g nutmeg, grated
- 2 cloves, ground
- 40 g cashew nuts, toasted
Equipment
Ramekins · Grater / zester
The skills inside
Steaming: basket, leaf and lidStraining & passing through a sieve
The words inside
Allergen screen
Found: egg · nuts
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
- Melt the jaggery with 60 ml of the coconut milk over low heat until it is a smooth dark syrup, then cool it to blood heat; poured in hot it will scramble the eggs on contact.
- Break the eggs up with a whisk just until the whites and yolks are one colour, working slowly so you do not beat in air that will set as foam.
- Stir in the remaining coconut milk, the jaggery syrup, the spices and the salt, then strain the lot into a bowl or into ramekins and skim off any froth. Cover tightly with foil.
- Steam over gently simmering water, the lid set ajar: ramekins take 25 minutes to 30 minutes, a single 1 litre bowl 50 minutes to 60 minutes. The probe is the only endpoint that works for both vessels, so use it: the centre should read 80C to 82C (176F to 180F), with the edge set and the middle moving as one piece. 25 min
- Cool, chill 3 hours, and scatter with the toasted cashews. 180 min
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.
Steaming: basket, leaf and lid 130 recipes
- Steam was running before the food went in: the water at a rolling boil and vapour coming steadily through the basket, rather than the whole thing warming up together.
- Nothing touches the water at any point: the food sits clear of it throughout, and the level neither drops enough to boil dry nor rises enough to wet it.
- The lid stayed on. Every lift costs the chamber its heat, and the number of lifts should be as close to none as the dish allows.
- Lifted out, the surface is glossy and plump with its colour heightened rather than dulled: greens brighter than they went in, not olive.
- Cooked through with the shape intact: it yields at the centre without having slumped or split, and there is no more than a spoonful of clean condensate beneath it.
Where it goes wrong The lid was loose or dripping and the condensate fell back onto the food, so it arrives waterlogged and pale with its seasoning washed down into the bottom of the dish.
Straining & passing through a sieve 148 recipes
- Nothing solid got through: a finger drawn through what came out finds no fibre, seed, skin, curd, or grit.
- Where the dish wants body it was worked through rather than left to drip, and the solids left in the mesh are spent and dry rather than still holding liquid worth having.
- It is judged on the tongue rather than by eye: smooth, with no residual grain left behind after the mouthful has gone.
- The mesh was fine enough for the job and held its shape, and nothing bypassed it by going over the rim.
- The yield is close to what went in less the spent solids: not half of it abandoned in the sieve because it stopped running and nobody pushed.
Where it goes wrong It was pushed through a mesh too coarse for it, or the sieve was overloaded and slopped at the rim, so the fibres it was meant to remove are in the finished sauce and it reads grainy on the tongue.
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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