Salim is sweet coloured mung bean noodles flavoured with jasmin. A traditional favourite of Thailand, although not very photogenic! There is a shortcut you can use if you don’t want to make the noodle, you can simply buy it and add colour it.

Ingredients
120 gms Mung Bean Flour
236 ml Water
1-2 Drops Of Jasmin Flavour
Food Color

Preparation
1. Mix the ming bean, water and color together (For each colour you make you need to start with fresh water to avoid the colour spreading).
2. Heat in a pan, stirring until the flour is cooked and has gone clear.
3. Press the gloopy mixture through a fine sieve into a bowl of icewater. It will set to form fine noodles.
4. Drain, then add the jasmin flavour.
5. Serve with coconut milk, sugar syrup and crushed ice

Soft, slightly sweet with a slight nutty flavour from the sesame seeds. That’s how I would describe this dessert. The dark yellow pieces in the picture are pieces of jack fruit.

Ingredients

• 30 gms Jack Fruit
• 120 gms Rice Flour
• 1 Tablespoon Cassava Starch
• 2 Tablespoons ( Pang Turw Yai Murm )or Corn Flour
• 150 gms Sugar
• 250 ml Coconut Milk
• 250 ml Evaporated Milk
• 250 ml Limestone Water (optional)
• Sesame Seeds
• 1-2 Drops Jasmin Flavour (optional)

Perparation
1. Mix the cassava starch, corn flour and rice flour together, then add the sugar.
2. Mix in the coconut milk, evaporated milk, limestone water, and jasmin flavour.
3. Heat in a saucepan over a medium heat, stirring continuously until the mixture becomes thick and sticky, then lower the heat and continue cooking for 1 minute to cook it through, then take off the heat.
4. Chop the jack fruit into small pieces, mix into the flour mixture.
5. Empty the mixture into a try, (a small lasagne tray works well), sprinkly the sesame seeds over the top, then leave to cool.
6. When its cold and set, remove from the tray and cut into squares

This recipe may sound a little strange. It is a dessert made from shrimp on a base of (non-spicy) curried rice. A common Thai dish, but the ingredients are not common to desserts!

Ingredients  for Yellow Rice
100 gms Sticky Rice
1-2 Teaspoons Tumeric
200 ml Coconut Milk
150 gms Sugar
1 Teaspoon Salt

Ingredients  for Sweet Shrimp
100 gms Shrimps
2-3 Garlic Cloves
1 Teaspoon White Pepper
10 gms Coriander Root or Seeds
100 gms Desiccated (Ground) Coconut
150 gms Sugar
1 Teaspoons Salt
2 Tablespoons Oil
2-3 Drops of Orange Food Colouring
10 gms Sliced Kaffir Leaves for Garnish

Preparation
1. To make the yellow rice, soak the sticky rice in warm water, and tumeric and leave for 4-8 hours.
2. Steam the rice until cooked, (approximately 15 minutes).
3. Place the rice in a bowl, mix with the sugar, salt and coconut milk. Leave it to soak up the coconut milk.
4. Now to the shrimp topping. Clean the shrimp, remove the shell and cut down the back to remove the black thread ‘gut’.
5. Chop the shrimp into a fine mince.
6. Pound the garlic and coriander root/seeds and white pepper together until well ground up.
7. Fry the shrimp and pounded mixture in a frying pan with a little oil until part cooked, 30 seconds or so is fine.
8. Mix the ground coconut with the orange food colouring, add to the frying pan, add the sugar and salt and fry for a further 2 minutes. The sugar will slightly caramelize.
9. Serve a small bowl of the yellow rice with the sweet shrimp on top and garnish with some slices of kaffie lime leaves

Taro in Coconut Sauce or Puerk Loy Gaiw in Thia  is  Taro Coconut Milk , Sweet .  I really must get around to taking a fresh photo. This one looks so miserable.

Ingredients
50 gms Taro
300 Water For Boiling
200 ml Coconut Milk
100 ml Water
150 Sugar
1/2 Teaspoon Salt
1 Teaspoon Limestone Water

Preparation
1. Peel and chop the taro into small squares, soak in the limestone water and top up with extra water just to cover it.
2. Rinse the taro and cook in boiling water for 20 minutes.
3. In a separate saucepan, mix the sugar and 100 ml water boil until the sugar has dissolved, then leave to cool to form a light syrup.
4. Warm the coconut milk in a saucepan, until its just warmed through and steaming.
5. Serve the taro in a bowl, with warmed coconut milk and some of the sugar syrup poured over it

This is literally a sandwich cake! In Thailand we often eat bread as a dessert with sweet sauces spread on it. For this recipe I’ve taken one of these sauces and made it into a layer cake. You can also make sandwiches of this and eat it as a picnic food or as a children’s treats.

Ingredients  for 2 Cakes
250 m Coconut Milk
150 gms Sugar
200 ml Evaporated Milk
3 Eggs
3 Tablespoons Wheat Flour
1 Teaspoon Salt
2-3 Drops Green Food Color
8-10 Slices of Bread
Desiccated Coconut for Garnish

Preparation
1. Whip the eggs to mix them, add all the other ingredients and whip together for 1 minute.
2. This needs to be cooked in a bain marie (a small pan sitting in a larger pan of boiling water so that it cooks gently). Cook slowly for 15 minutes, stirring continuously.
3. Let it cool a little, for this cake, you can eat this topping warm or cold!
4. Cut the crusts off the bread. Layer slices of bread, and sauce alternately, with a top layer of the sauce.
5. Dust with dried coconut

A very simple dessert, bananas in a sweet sauce with slightly salty coconut milk. It’s typical in Thailand to add salt to desserts to balance the sweetness. For extra richness use coconut cream, the thicker top layer of coconut milk.

Ingredients
4-5 Bananas
50 gms Sugar
200 ml Water
50 ml Coconut Milk
1/3 Teaspoon Salt

Preparation
1. Boil the water with the sugar until dissolved.
2. Cut the bananas into halves and add to the boiling syrup and cook for 5 minutes. Set the sauce and bananas to one side.
3. In another saucepan, heat the coconut milk gently together with the salt. You just want to warm through the coconut milk and dissolve the salt, no more. Do not let it boil!
4. To serve place some of the banana in a dish with some of the sugar syrup and spoon over the warm coconut milk.

These little ‘jewels’ are made from salad radishes and are crunchy in the centre like pomegranate seeds. You can also use apple if you prefer, but for true authenticity use water chestnuts, which you can buy in a tin from Asian grocers. In the above photograph only the jewels are shown, the syrup and coconut milk weren’t added so you can see the sparkle of the jewels.

Ingredients
100 gms Cassava Starch
50 gms Radish, Apple or Water Chestnuts
100 ml Coconut Milk
1/4 Teaspoon Salt
200 ml Water
200 gms Sugar
200 gms Crushed Ice
Beetroot Water (For Colouring)

Preparation
1. Chop the radish into small squares and soak in beetroot water (the water fresh beetroot is packed in) for 3-4 hours to colour the radish pieces. If you do not have beetroot water, you can use a red food colouring instead.
2. Drain the radish pieces and add them to the cassava starch.
3. Boil water and add the radish pieces to the boiling water. They will swell and cook, it’s normal to leave a little uncooked centre pieces to give the crunch. Then drop them into cool water.
4. Boil 200 ml water with the sugar until the sugar is dissolved and leave it to cool, to from a syrup.
5. Into a separate pan, put coconut milk, and add the salt. Boil for 1/2 minutes and leave it to cool.
6. To serve, place some of the radish jewels into a serving bowl, add some of the coconut milk, some syrup to make it as sweet as you prefer, and some crushed ice

Another way to use up left over pumpkin, the pumpkin is cut into pieces and cooked in a coconut sauce and topped off with sugar syrup. This is typical Thai flavours.

Ingredients  for 2 People
100 gms Pumpkin
200 ml Coconut Milk
300 gms Sugar
200 ml Water
1/4 Teaspoon Salt

Preparation
1. Peel the skin off the pumpkin and cut into bite sized pieces.
2. Mix the sugar with the water and boil until the sugar dissolves. Add the pumpkin and cook for 10 minutes.
3. In a separate saucepan, simmer the coconut milk with salt for 1 minute and set aside to cool.
4. To serve place the pumpkin & a little syrup in a bowl and top off the coconut milk.

We eat a lot of vegetables in desserts in Thailand, including potato. The starch in potato tastes sweet when eaten, enzymes in your mouth break the starch into sugars, so it’s not such an unusual thing to have for a dessert.

Ingredients  for 2 People
2 Potatoes
150 ml Water
150 gms Sugar
100 ml Coconut Milk
1/4 Salt

Preparation
1. Peeling the potatoes and chop into bite sized cubes.
2. Steam for 10 minutes until fully cooked.
3. Boil the water with the sugar, until dissolved and leave to cool.
4. Boil the coconut milk with the salt for the salt to dissolve and the coconut milk to get hot.
5. Serve the potatoes in a bowl, with the hot coconut milk poured over them, and pour over enough syrup to make it as sweet as you like.

Sometimes the simplest dishes are the best, this dessert requires fresh ripe melon, either gala melon or cantaloupe are ideal for this. It is simply melon and coconut, the coconut adds a richer taste to the melon and the two flavours work extremely well together.

Ingredients
1 Slice of Melon
Crushed Ice
Coconut Milk

Preparation
1. Cut the melon into cubes.
2. Crush the ice and add some pieces to the melon.
3. Pour coconut milk over the top.