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Kiribath (Coconut Milk Rice Pressed and Cut into Diamonds)

Name: Kiribath (Coconut Milk Rice Pressed and Cut into Diamonds)
Prep time: 10 min
Cook time: 30 min
Total time: 40 min
Yield: 6 servings
Cuisine: Sri Lankan
Ingredients: 400 g rice; 700 ml water; 400 ml thick coconut milk; 1.5 tsp salt; 1 red onion; 2 tbsp coarse chilli flakes; 1 tbsp Maldive fish flakes; 1 tbsp lime juice; 0.5 tsp salt

Sri Lanka's festival rice. The rice is cooked soft in water first, thick coconut milk goes in after and is cooked down, and the hot rice is pressed flat, left to cool and cut into diamonds. Rice cooked with coconut milk usually stays in separate grains; this one has to hold together as a block to be cut. Letting the water reach the starch first, leaving the surface starch on, and pressing it while hot are what do it. Served with lunu miris, a hot onion relish.

Ingredients

6servings

Kiribath (serves 6)
rice · starchy short-grain white rice; Korean or Japanese rice is close400 g
water700 ml
thick coconut milk · the thick top of a tin400 ml
salt1.5 tsp
Lunu miris
red onion · or 6 shallots, finely chopped1
coarse chilli flakes2 tbsp
Maldive fish flakes · optional; or pounded dried shrimp1 tbsp
lime juice1 tbsp
salt0.5 tsp

Steps

Rinse the rice twice only, gently, and drain it. Do not wash all the surface starch off.
Bring the rice and 700ml water to the boil, lower the heat, cover and cook for 15 minutes, until the water is almost gone and the rice is softer than you would cook it for plain rice.
⏲ 15 min
Stir the salt into the coconut milk, pour it over the rice and mix well. Once it comes back to the boil, turn it to the lowest heat and cook uncovered for 8-10 minutes, stirring from the bottom, until the coconut milk has soaked in and the rice clumps on the spoon. Turn off the heat.
⏲ 10 min
Turn the rice out onto a wide plate lined with banana leaf or baking paper, and with a wet spatula press it firmly into a flat square 3cm thick. This has to be done while it is hot.
Score deep diamonds across the top with a wet knife.
Leave it to cool at room temperature for 20-30 minutes, then cut right through along the scores and lift the pieces out.
⏲ 25 min
While the rice cools, make the lunu miris: pound the onion, chilli flakes, fish flakes and salt in a mortar until the onion gives up its juice, then stir in the lime juice. Serve it beside the kiribath.

Variations

A square instead of diamonds: it is also pressed into one square slab and served whole, as in the photograph.
Other sides: instead of lunu miris it is served with a sweet-hot fried onion relish, with bananas, or with palm sugar.
With glutinous rice: cooked with glutinous rice it heads towards a stretchy rice cake. This one is made with ordinary rice so that it cuts cleanly without pulling.

More detail and the reasons why (1)

Festival and New Year rice: Korean Wikipedia calls kiribath a traditional Sri Lankan dish, rice cooked with coconut milk and eaten on festivals and special days; the name means "milk rice", the milk here being coconut milk.

Tips

Coconut-milk rice, and it has to stick. Cooking rice explains why coconut-milk rice usually falls into grains: "Fat coats each grain and slows the water reaching its starch, so the grains stay separate instead of knitting". Nasi lemak is that case. Kiribath has to hold together to be cut, so it runs the same mechanism in the other order. Cooked in water first, the rice has its water in the starch already, and the coconut milk's fat arrives at grains that have swollen.

More detail and the reasons why (5)

Leave the surface starch on. The same guide gives the reason for rinsing rice: loose surface starch, and "Left on, it glues them together." That is why ordinary rice is rinsed, and why this rice is rinsed less. Twice, gently.
Press it hot, let it set as it cools. Serving temperature says of pyeonyuk that it is pressed while hot "so the dissolved gelatin spreads between the fibres and sets on cooling, gluing the whole into one block". In kiribath the glue is starch rather than gelatin, but the order is the same. Pressed once it has cooled, it crumbles instead of holding.
The milk that boils over. Korean Wikipedia records that a family reads the coming year from the coconut milk boiling over as the rice cooks. The kitchen rule sits on the other side. As the rice guide puts it: "Coconut milk splits and its solids catch if it is boiled hard." In a rice pot it "comes up once and then sits on the lowest setting". Turn it down as soon as it comes up.
Keep it out of the fridge. Rice held together by starch firms as it cools, and serving temperature is plain about where that happens fastest: "The fridge is worse than the counter." Eat it the same day, at room temperature.
Pound the lunu miris. Onion pounded with salt gives up its juice, which wets the chilli and brings it together with no oil. It is the salty, hot, sour partner to a plain, rich rice.