Satun vendors continue the tradition of making ‘Khao Niew Mo Khao Mo Kaeng Ling’, a Thai dessert based on local wisdom. It has a sweet and creamy taste, but is now hard to find.
Khao Niew Mo Khao Kaeng Ling is a Thai dessert made from local wisdom. It is now quite difficult to find and it takes a long time to make it for sale. It starts with finding a pot or cone from the forest and having to clean it meticulously to wash away all the insects in the pot. When the process is complete, it must taste delicious. In Satun Province, there are very few of them at the moment because the Mo Khao Kaeng Ling plants only grow in specific forest areas.
Ms. Nongnuch, 53 years old, a Satun native who is a vendor of sticky rice with a pitcher plant, or simply called ‘sticky rice with pitcher plant’, said that she inherited the making of this dessert from her mother. In the past, her mother made it for sale, and she followed her to find the pitcher plant every time, so she knew where it was collected, which was on the moun
tainside, about 2 kilometers from her house. The pitcher plant grows in large numbers in the forest. She only picks female pitchers because the male ones are tough and sticky, and there are more insects in them than the female ones. Each time she picks them, they last for 3 days, because if she picks them longer than that, the pitcher plant will turn black and wilt, making it unusable for making dessert. Her mother has been making sticky rice with pitcher plant for over 30 years, and she only started making and selling them herself 2 years ago because she wanted to follow in her mother’s footsteps and did not want this dessert to disappear.
For the process, after washing the monkey pot, wash the sticky rice 6 times, then dry it in the sun or wind until the sticky rice is dry. Mix the coconut cream with a little coconut milk, season with sweetness and saltiness, then pour the sticky rice into the pot. While pouring the sticky rice, watch the monkey pot carefully to make sure there are no insects hiding. Do no
t pour the sticky rice until it is half full of the monkey pot, pour in the coconut milk, then steam it for 1 hour with low heat to cook the sticky rice. The sticky rice will be cooked to fill the pot, the coconut cream will rise to the edge of the dessert pot, the taste is the most fragrant, sweet and creamy.
I make them and sell them every day at the shop at the entrance of the alley and also take orders from the Eat@Satun group. I earn 300 baht a day from selling Khanom Mo Khao Mo Kaeng Ling. I sell Khao Niew Mo Ling for 20 baht per box. I choose various sizes of Khanom Mo Khao and mix them together, 5-6 pieces. With 1 kilogram of sticky rice, I get 18 boxes of Khanom Mo Khao. I send them to sell in the morning at the shop at the entrance of Khao Chin Alley, Khlong Khut Subdistrict, where I also sell fried noodles and rice mixed with shrimp paste.
For sticky rice with monkey pots or sticky rice with monkey pots, it can only be made during the rainy season because there are many pots growing in the forest
. During the dry season, all the monkey pots will die because they grow naturally. Especially in years with severe drought, there will be no monkey pots to keep. As for my dessert, it can be kept outside the refrigerator for up to 2 days because I emphasize cleanliness.
Source: Thai News Agency