Steamed Sago and Coconut Kuih

In the spirit of Ramadan Month, i.e. the fasting month of Muslims all over the world, I thought I'll try to make kuih (Malay : bite-sized snack or dessert) just for fun.

(To set the record right, although I do not eat pork, and you won't see any pork recipe here, I'm not Muslim.)

We were in the book shop over the weekend, and I flipped through this recipe book on Malaysian kuih. I'd forgotten the name of the book, or the name of the kuih, but I remember the recipe. The following day, as it was marketting day (going to the wet market to get our supplies for the week), I bought the ingredients and tried to make them at home.

I'm sure the kuih has a Malay sounding name, but I'll just call mine Steamed Sago and Coconut Kuih (If you happen to know the name of the kuih, do drop me a comment here).

(I got my eldest to help me cut strips of pandan leaf)

♥Recipe for Sago and Coconut Kuih♥
Make 10 kuihs.

You'll need :

1 big banana leaf
100g grated coconut
100g sago
1 pandan leaf cut into strips (optional)
3 Tbs brown sugar*
4 Tbs mascovado sugar*
2 Tbs of coconut milk/santan (if you are using dried dessicated coconut, you may want to increase the coconut milk/santan and make sure the coconut is wet through)

(*I use brown and mascovado sugar because this is what we have at home.You can substitude brown with white sugar, and gula malaka with mascovado sugar if you like.)

Method :

1) Rinse the sago once or twice and then soak the sago for about 1.5~2hrs. Drain the water when the sago is soft.

2) Cut the banana leaf into 10 pieces of 15cm squares, remove the hard stem in the centre. Boil the leaf in a pot of water for about 8mins to soften it (to make wrapping easier).

3) Mix coconut, coconut milk, sago and sugar together.

(My eldest, who saw me mixing the coconut and the sago together, was in shock. She asked me, "Are you cooking styrofoam??!!" She thought those sago pearls were styrofoam)

4) To wrap the kuih, put a strip of pandan leaf (optional, I just did it to make the kuih more fragrant) in the centre of the banana leaf, scoop a table spoon of sago and coconut mixture and place it on top of the pandan leaf, over lap the ends of the leaf until a cylinder is formed.

Staple one end of the cylinder (the better choice is to use tooth pick to seal up the ends, I have no time for that). Fill up the banana leaf cylinder with more coconut and sago mixture until 2/3 full, then staple the other end as well.

5) Repeat the step until all coconut and sago mixture is used up.

(You can see I'm a first timer, the sizes of the kuihs are uneven. :P)

6) Steam the wrapped kuihs for 20minutes.

I don't have photographic memory, so I may have skipped an ingredient or two (from the book), but using the above recipe, the kuih turned out to be rather delicious, with the right texture.

Not too difficult to make, and it's very yummy, if you like sago that is.