Spectacular Thai coconut cream pumpkin custard
Thai pumpkin custard is eaten at room temperature. It looks great and it can be prepared well in advance. It's name in thai “sangkhayaa (ph)*uck thong”. It's available locally as either wedges or as a whole pumpkin.
1 pumpkin (about 400 grms)
8 eggs
1 1/2 cups palm sugar
1 cup coconut cream
pandanus leaves (for stirring the mixture)
method
thoroughly clean the pumpkin
using a sharp knife cut off a slice at the stem end to make a lid.
Take out the seeds and membrane and drain well.
Combine the eggs, sugar and coconut cream in a large bowl and, using the pandanus leaves, stir the mixture until all the sugar is dissolved.
Strain the mixture and set it aside.
Fill the pumpkin with the mixture up to 1″ from the top.
Steam the pumpkin and the lid over boiling water for about 1 hour or until the pumpkin is cooked.
Remove from the heat, cool and serve in thick wedges
• pronounced as "f" but the editors won't allow this realistic romanisation
Peters comment regarding the substitution of pandanus leaves for vanilla extract;
the pandanus; the flavour of pandanus is fresh maybe a little earthy whereas vanilla is quite floral the sweetness of the custard would certainly accept the vanilla i would probably add a bit of lime juice to break it a little which i think the pandanus tends to do a fraction. I hadn't thought of the availability of pandanus. There is an essence available and frozen leaves in Thai grocers. A last resort would be dried leaves and boiling with the coconut milk for 10 minutes to extract the essence. I would only do this as a last resort because you will have to filter the milk after and it tends to get gluggy.
If you go the vanilla essence way as well as the lime juice to bring in the color of the custard a few green food color drops. The custard tends to have a light caramel color no apparent hint of green.
