Thai Pumpkin Custard, Sankaya

 Thai Pumpkin Custard, Sankaya

Ingredients:

One small pumpkin 400 – 600 g

4 eggs

2 dl coconut milk

300 g palm sugar

2 tbs rice flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

A few pandan leaves

Instructions:

Wash your pumpkin thoroughly. Cut a square opening in the top. Use a very sharp knife to cut it out.  Pull the square out and cut off the strings.
Scoop out all of the pumpkin seeds inside and rinse to ensure it's clean and smooth inside.

Soak the cleaned pumpkin in 1 l lime water for about 20-30 minutes. (just ordinary water with some lime in.)

Mix the eggs, palm sugar, coconut milk, rice flour, salt and vanilla extract.

Fold the pandan leaves with your hands and mix the custard mix with your hands, using the pandan leaves to squeeze the mix. Dissolve the palm sugar using your hands and the leaves to squeeze. When all is mixed and sugar dissolved, pour the mix through a sift.

Pour the custard into your hollowed out pumpkin, just to the bottom of the circular opening.  Place the filled pumpkin in a bowl or tin and if the tin is wider, add some foil around the pumpkin to give it support all around. You don´t want the pumpkin to break as you steam it.

Place in a steamer. Put the lid you cut out on the side. Don´t close the filled pumpkin. Let steam for 45 minutes untouched. Once it's done, allow to cool a bit before touching.

To serve you can now fix the top so the lid fits to put back on. It looks cool when presenting.

When cooled, slice the pumpkin as you would slice a cake, to individual pieces and enjoy!

You can eat the entire pumpkin - the skin and flesh of the pumpkin and the creamy custard inside. Refrigerate any leftovers.

If you have additional custard left over pour into a shallow dish, top with slices of pumpkin, and steam alongside the whole pumpkin custard. Once it's done, slice into pieces for a little bit of a different pumpkin custard dessert.