Just One Recipe: Taro Coconut Rice Pudding 🍚
And a meditation on loneliness.
Hello and welcome back to Five Things I Ate! This week, we stir something steamy in a pot to ward off the existential crisis of being alone. Read past posts here, and please follow my Instagram, @fivethingsiate.
On Friday evening I said goodbye to my coworker after a long workweek and shut my laptop. I looked around me and realized that I was all alone.* This should not have been a surprise because I have been living by myself for three years now, completely of my own choice, yet I always forget what it is like to feel profoundly lonely until it grows dark early. Every summer I forget the winter, and every winter I feel like summer will never come. I have an emotional memory of no more than the distance between August and November. It is a shock to me every time that I could feel this sad.
* Minus my cat, who is not to be written off lightly.
I think a lot about living alone. I worked very hard to get my own place and I always wanted to afford to live by myself. Sometimes it feels like a luxury. And sometimes it feels like an odd punishment I inflicted on myself. But most of all, it feels safe. I think everyone should get to live by themselves once, at least for a year. But in every family, there is also the warning story of the crone. I often think about how solitude can feel both neverending and unbreakable yet entirely fleeting and fragile. It’s like standing behind a sheet of frosted glass. I can break it in an instant – any time I want –but the only way to get back to being peacefully alone is to drag my hand through broken glass.
Anyways, this is probably getting way too emo for the lighthearted food newsletter you signed up for. I meant to make this week’s newsletter about some kind of charming Asian diaspora food story about how I made myself taro and sticky rice to comfort myself when I felt alone. How I decided to spend Friday night going to H-Mart to buy taro and sticky rice and coconut milk, to cheer myself up. How the sticky rice, which melted into more of a rice pudding, gave off the most beautiful coconutty fragrance, perfuming my whole apartment. How my cat is sitting in my lap now, purring, as I write these words. You would have really liked that newsletter, but I didn’t feel like writing it this week. Maybe next time. I’ll knit some words so cozy and peaceful, you’ll forget that you sometimes feel alone.
Taro Coconut Rice Pudding
Makes approximately 6 very rich servings.
Adapted from: Ang Sarap but I made quite a few changes below.
A few notes on this recipe:
I made this taro & sticky rice recipe based on a craving I had for I’Milky’s Fresh Coconut Taro Milk with Purple Rice which my friend got last week when we hung out and I’ve been obsessed with it ever since. This, however, is absolutely nothing like that. For one, this recipe is sincerely Not Too Sweet. Which means, if you don’t have a traditional East Asian palette, you might find it more like a breakfast porridge, or even health food, considering it is partially a boiled root vegetable. I feel like for me it makes a perfect breakfast, and is more nourishing than my usual coffee and cookie. In addition, the coconut cream sauce never thickened for me, I think because the addition of water in the original recipe makes it way too soupy. When I followed the recipe linked as is, it was more of a dessert soup on top of my rice pudding (which, to be fair, isn’t wrong for certain Asian desserts. We do love our dessert soup). I am going to suggest instead the shortcut of just topping it off with coconut cream, the stuff that floats to the top of the can.
Recipe
First, in a large bowl, combine :
2/3 cup glutinous rice (I used white rice, but I like the taste of purple – I just couldn’t find it in store)
With 2 cups of room temperature water.
Soak and set aside, for at least 30 min but for as long as you want, really.
Meanwhile, simmer on low (be careful it tends to overboil!):
3 baby taro, peeled and cut into 1 inch cubes in
2 cups of water
You want to simmer til tender – about 10 minutes, but check with a fork.
When the taro is tender, take it out with a slotted spoon and set aside in a bowl.
Do not drain the water! In that same saucepan, stir in:
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup coconut milk (shaken, from the can)
Plus the water drained from the rice (2 cups)
Bring to a simmer and slowly stir in the drained rice. Cook for 15 minutes or until thick and creamy, stirring on occasion so it doesn’t burn.
Serve warm, scooped into mini serving bowls, topped with the boiled taro and a spoonful of coconut cream. Store leftovers in the fridge.
Have a good weekend,
Soph
P.S. You thought I was going to ask you to pay for a subscription of my newsletter, but actually I’m going to share this poem on loneliness that I like. It’s originally from the Paris Review but you can read the whole thing on Reddit in a totally unromantic font.
P.P.S. Do subscribe.