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

This dessert is strands of sugary cooked egg yolk,flavored with rose water (or vanilla essence in water also works). It’s difficult to make. I’ve tried many times and this is the first time I’ve managed to get the strands to work.
The strands are streams of egg yolk drizzled through a fine sieve into a large pan of hot sugar syrup. The strands cook immediately and you end up with sweet golden strands of egg. For this to work, you needs lots and lots of egg yolk, the more egg yolks the better, so don’t reduce the quantity of eggs. Use the largest flattest pan you can find, the more spread out the strands the nicer they look. The duck eggs yolks in the recipe are larger and more yellow than the chicken, and help you achieve the golden colour.
In Thailand they use a piping bag with a special nozzle with many fine holes especially for this. But I don’t have one, what I found works is a large sugar shaker, filled with the egg mixture, you tip it upside down and the egg runs as streams through the holes, which I slowly moved forwards and backwards, left to right over the pan until all the mixture had gone through.
As with many Thai desserts, we flavour them with flower essence, using rose water or jasmin flower essence in water. However you can use vanilla essence in water or similar flavouring of your choice if you prefer.

Ingredients
10 Duck Egg Yolks
5 Chicken Egg Yolks
1 Teaspoon Oil
950 ml Rose Water
900 gms Sugar
1-2 teaspoons flavoring (Jasmin Essence, or Vanilla)

Preparation
1. Mix all the egg yolks together, add the oil, sieve to remove any lumps. It is important to remove any lumps of thick parts so the yolk runs freely.
2. Mix water and sugar, bring to the boil and simmer. You want a slightly thick sugar syrup.
3. Add the flavouring to the hot syrup, turn off the heat so the syrup isn’t boiling.
4. Fill you piping bag (or sugar shaker in my case) and pipe the egg yolk into the hot syrup making strands, forwards and backwards until all the mixture has been used.
5. Remove the strands using a pasta tong or similar. You can also put a fork in, and twist the fork so the strands form around the fork into a ball and serve them like that.

This dessert is a mung bean salty sweet dessert so typical of Thailand.

Ingredients For Base
60 gms Mung Bean Flour
800 ml Rose or Jasmin Water
150 gms Sugar
2-3 Food Coloring
Moulds for Setting

Preparation
1. Mix the flour, rose water, and sugar and stir until dissolved.
2. Warm over a medium heat, stir until it goes clear.
3. Fill the moulds to 2/3rds full.

Ingredients For the Coconut Topping
200 ml Coconut Milk
1 1/2 Tablespoon Rice Flour
1/4 Teaspoon Salt

Preparation
1. Mix all the ingredients, warm over a medium heat, stirring until the coconut thickens and rice flour is cooked through.
2. Turn off the heat.
3. Pour a thin layer over the mung bean mixture.
4. Sprinkle a few toasted sesame seeds to garnish

Bi tua is a sweet reed with a bubblegum like flavour and green colour used in Thai dishes to add a unique flavour to the dessert. You can see it in the background of the photograph.

Ingredients
120 gms Mung Bean Flour ( Pang Tur )
120 gms Cassava Starch
120 gms Tapioca Flour
4-5 Bi Tua Leaves
1000 ml Water
200 ml Coconut Milk
600 gms Sugar

Preparation
1. Mix the two flours and starch together.
2. Place the bi-tua leaves and water in a blender and liquidize. Then filter the water (to remove the leaf pulp).
3. Boil the water with sugar until the sugar is dissolved.
4. Leave to cool.
5. Take 400ml of the bi tua syrup, add the coconut milk
6. Split the flour in two equal portions. Mix one portion with the bi-tua and coconut milk, and one portion with the remaining bi-tua water. One part will become clear, one layer will be cloudy, we use these to make layers in the dessert.
7. Put a foil tray in a steamer, and get it hot.
8. Ladle in a shallow layer of the clear mixture and steam it for 3-5 minutes to just cook it.
9. Next ladle in the cloudy layer (the mixture with coconut milk) and steam that for 3-5 minutes to cook it.
10. Keep doing this until the metal tray is filled up and the dessert is cooked.
11. Leave to cool in the fridge, cut into diamonds and lay out of the plate

The western tradition is that the dessert is sweet. The Thai tradition is slightly different, the Thai word for dessert is ‘kanom’ and covers all types of post main course dishes & snacks. This leads to some very strange desserts and this is one of them. The top layer is whiter and made from coconut milk and is very salty, the lower layer is very sweet and contains corn. The idea is that the two layers balance out, when eating this dessert you should take some from both layers with your spoon – a little sweet and a little salt.

Ingredients  for Sweet Part
100 gms Rice flour
150 gms Sugar
150 ml Rose Water
30 gms Corn Flour

Ingredient for Salty Topping
100 mls Coconut Milk
2 Tablespoons Rice Flour
2 Teaspoons Sugar
1 Teaspoon Salt
1 Tablespoon Sesame Seeds

Preparation for Sweet Part
1. Mix the sugar and the with rice flour.
2. Add the rose water and stir until the flour is well mixed.
3. Place on a medium heat and keep stirring until the flour is cooked – it will lose its whiteness and become more transparent.
4. Add the corn and stir to mix it in.
5. Spoon it into the base of the serving dishes and leave to cool.

Preparation for the Topping
1. Mix the sugar, flour and salt together.
2. Add the coconut milk and stir it until well mixed.
3. Put it on low heat and stir it until the flour is cooked.
4. Spoon it out ontop of the sweet mixture and place in the fridge.
5. Put sesame seed in a small frying pan, heat the pan and brown the seeds for the rich nut fragrance to develop. This takes only 30 seconds or so.
6. Drop a few sesame seeds onto each serving.

Notes
Corn is typical for this dish, however pear can be used too if corn does not appeal to you. You can serve this dessert still warm if you prefer