![]() I let the pandan flavors steep in the coconut milk by adding leaves to the milk as I reduced it. I took Thomas Keller’s coconut cake - a simple white cake, very much like an angel food cake - and added pandan flavor to the cake batter and meringue frosting. Filipinos not only love using pandan leaves in cooking rice but in cooking and baking with coconut as well. Last Saturday, I turned 37 and found myself happily reunited with the endeared pandan. The fragrance of the pandan leaves would then delightfully permeate the kitchen and the entire house. ![]() As soon as the water boiled, she would turn the heat down and let the rice simmer gently. She would then bury a knot or two of pandan leaves in the bed of rice. She would use the folds of her fingers as her guide to make sure she added ample amount of water. She would fill the pot of rice with water and then dip her hand in the pot, fingers first and fingers straightened. She would wash them three times, tossing the water after each wash either in the sink or in a bowl to use the wash later to boil fish. She would pour the grains in a pot and thoroughly wash them over running water. My mom would measure rice using an old tin milk can, roughly equivalent to a cup. Pandan adds a subtle fragrance and flavor that I find difficult to describe. My mom would tie the long, narrow, bladelike leaves into a simple knot and add them to steaming rice. ![]() The sweet smell of pandan leaves steeping in a pot of simmering rice is, perhaps, one of my earliest and fondest recollections of food as a child.
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