Mango Sticky Rice

Variations

• Pandan-scented: Add pandan leaves to the steaming water or sauce for aroma.
• Colored rice: Tint the rice blue with butterfly pea flower.
• Other fruit: Swap the mango for durian or banana.
• Microwave shortcut: Cook soaked rice with water in the microwave instead of steaming.

Tips

• The rice is cooked in water and meets the coconut milk afterwards, and that is the whole design. Nasi lemak does the opposite and pays for it in three places that cooking rice sets out: coconut milk is only half to two-thirds water so the ratio shifts, its fat coats each grain and slows the water reaching the starch, and it cannot be driven as hard as water can. Steaming plain and pouring after avoids all three — the grain gelatinises on water alone, and the coconut arrives when there is nothing left for it to get in the way of.
• The fifteen minutes under a cover is the cooking that is left. Glutinous rice is almost entirely amylopectin, and hot from the steamer it will still take up liquid and hold it; let it cool first and you are pouring sauce onto rice that has started to set. That is why the instruction is hot rice and not warm sauce over cold rice.
• And the sauce is warmed only until the sugar dissolves for a reason of its own. Coconut milk taken further breaks into oil and solids — rendang does exactly that on purpose and spends hours on it — so here anything past dissolving costs you the smooth sauce the rice is about to drink. The cream spooned over at the end is the same ingredient handled the other way: thickened with a little cornstarch so it sits on top instead of soaking in.
• You must use glutinous (sticky) rice — regular rice won't work.
• Soak the rice for at least an hour (overnight is better) so it cooks evenly.
• Pour the coconut sauce over the rice while it's hot so it soaks in.
• Use a fully ripe mango — its sweetness makes the dessert.