Kaya (Coconut Custard Jam)
If there's one guilty pleasure that I will openly divulge, it's my love of watching cooking shows. One show, Unique Eats, showcases various topics, but one episode featured street foods. The restaurants are known for everything from specialty waffles, rotisserie meats and potatoes, fish sauce chicken wings, and my biggest drool inducing segment at Susan Feniger's restaurant Street in California.
Susan is known for her Latin cuisine, so I was completely surprised by her recipe for Kaya Toast.
Popular amongst Singaporeans and Malaysians, this dish consists of kaya (eggs, sugar, and coconut milk) with pandan (a toasted bread).
At Susan's restaurant, pandan is bathed in this coconut jam, topped with a shaved slice of butter, and accompanied with a soft fried egg topped with white pepper and dark soy sauce, and some bitter arugula.
People claim the dish is best eaten if you use your chunks of kaya toast to break the egg yolk and eat it all smothered on the bread, but I'm pretty sure there's no wrong way to eat this stuff. I haven't had the whole dish as artfully photographed above, but I did make my own version of kaya this afternoon.
Though flavored and textured more like a custard than a fruit jam spread on toast, you will not regret a single mouthful of this genius concoction. Okay, I might regret it. I'm sure my old fat pants would fit, again, if I ate the batch I made. It's probably all too obvious what friends and neighbors are getting as a homemade Christmas treat!!!
Ingredients
1 cup coconut milk
1 cup sugar, divided into two 1/2 cup portions
3 whole eggs
3 egg yolks
1/8 teaspoon salt
2 inch ginger nugget
In a small sauce pan, combine coconut milk and 1/2 cup sugar and mix well. Peel the ginger nugget and add to sauce pan. Over high heat, bring to a boil. Once boiling, remove from heat and allow mixture to steep for 10 minutes. Remove ginger. Allow mixture to cool.
In a stainless steel bowl, whisk together eggs, egg yolks, and remaining 1/2 cup sugar, to begin a custard base. Stir in cooled coconut milk mixture.
Place the stainless steel bowl over a medium pot of lightly simmering water. Gently cook the custard, stirring constantly with a rubber spatula, until the mixture thickens, 15 to 20 minutes. The final texture should have a thick custard consistency (a trail of the spatula should remain on the surface of the custard for more than 10 seconds).
Immediately remove from the heat and strain into a medium bowl set over a larger bowl of ice water. Stir until the custard cools, then cover and refrigerate until needed. This makes about 2 cups coconut jam. The jam will keep for 1 week, refrigerated.
If you want to remain true to Susan's dish, check out the whole assembly, but there is no wrong way to eat this. Toast. Pancakes. A spoon. Your fingers. Someone else's fingers. Ain't no shame in how you consume this stuff.
Make, eat, & love!
Susan is known for her Latin cuisine, so I was completely surprised by her recipe for Kaya Toast.
At Susan's restaurant, pandan is bathed in this coconut jam, topped with a shaved slice of butter, and accompanied with a soft fried egg topped with white pepper and dark soy sauce, and some bitter arugula.
People claim the dish is best eaten if you use your chunks of kaya toast to break the egg yolk and eat it all smothered on the bread, but I'm pretty sure there's no wrong way to eat this stuff. I haven't had the whole dish as artfully photographed above, but I did make my own version of kaya this afternoon.
Though flavored and textured more like a custard than a fruit jam spread on toast, you will not regret a single mouthful of this genius concoction. Okay, I might regret it. I'm sure my old fat pants would fit, again, if I ate the batch I made. It's probably all too obvious what friends and neighbors are getting as a homemade Christmas treat!!!
Ingredients
1 cup coconut milk
1 cup sugar, divided into two 1/2 cup portions
3 whole eggs
3 egg yolks
1/8 teaspoon salt
2 inch ginger nugget
In a small sauce pan, combine coconut milk and 1/2 cup sugar and mix well. Peel the ginger nugget and add to sauce pan. Over high heat, bring to a boil. Once boiling, remove from heat and allow mixture to steep for 10 minutes. Remove ginger. Allow mixture to cool.
In a stainless steel bowl, whisk together eggs, egg yolks, and remaining 1/2 cup sugar, to begin a custard base. Stir in cooled coconut milk mixture.
Place the stainless steel bowl over a medium pot of lightly simmering water. Gently cook the custard, stirring constantly with a rubber spatula, until the mixture thickens, 15 to 20 minutes. The final texture should have a thick custard consistency (a trail of the spatula should remain on the surface of the custard for more than 10 seconds).
Immediately remove from the heat and strain into a medium bowl set over a larger bowl of ice water. Stir until the custard cools, then cover and refrigerate until needed. This makes about 2 cups coconut jam. The jam will keep for 1 week, refrigerated.
If you want to remain true to Susan's dish, check out the whole assembly, but there is no wrong way to eat this. Toast. Pancakes. A spoon. Your fingers. Someone else's fingers. Ain't no shame in how you consume this stuff.
Make, eat, & love!
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