Bang Na Delight - Dessert in Thailand

I was in Bangkok recently and a good friend of mine took me to a seafood restaurant in Bang Na - a city/town nearby the airport.

To be honest, I loved the food so much I totally forgot to take pictures of what we ate during lunch. But I can tell you the crab meat was truly amazing! The seafood soup reminds me of the "kimchi" seafood soup except that they use a little more tomato paste and lots of chili. Great stuff the seafood soup - with pieces of young coconut kelp. But I digress…

After our meal, we were leaving when we came across a seldom seen dessert set up just outside the seafood restaurant. Coconut based dessert is common in BKK but this is the first time I am eating it. They call it Kenom Toei - toei means small saucer in Thai.

The dessert is steamed in small saucers and made from coconut milk and palm sugar - that gives the bottom layer its brown color. Seen here is the palm sugar based used to make the first layer.

The dessert comes in two layers - the bottom half is sweet while the top half is salty. The bottom kettle houses the first mixture which contains the palm sugar and the top kettle is filled with salted coconut milk.

When the water boiled, the ladies pours the first mixture into the saucers. Filling half the saucer.

Then she lets the saucer steam for about 5 minutes.

When the timer rings, it is time to pour the second mixture and then steam again for another 5 minutes.

Then it is time and they have to remove the tray of dessert and allow it to cool for about one minutes.

The lady takes the saucers out by hand and presents them on a tray.

The dessert is eaten warm. Cut it into half and you can see the two layers of the dessert. Bottom half sweet and top half salty. The bottom half is gel like. Goes pretty well I must say.

And when we were finished, we had another one packet for take away.

I carried the packet all the way back to Singapore and I must say that the Kenom Toei tasted better chilled! I was told by the lady that the saucers are older vintage saucers that are hard to find. She even had a tourist offer to buy her whole set - saucer, kettle, steamers and all. Its not in the hardware, its in the recipe. Try it the next time you go to Bangkok - if you can find it.