There's a book called the
Spiritual Nutrition and the Rainbow Diet where the author Gabriel Cousens says that you should try to eat all the colors of the rainbow every day. Activate your base chakra with red food, the solar plexus with yellow, some other one with green, the next with pink, some other ones in between and then the crown chakra with purple food. I love this way of looking at nutrition, but not all purple foods can be equally spiritual. I just can't see myself walking into heaven with an eggplant in my hand. However, I am totally willing to believe that I can eat my way to Nirvana with a big batch of sticky black rice. Well maybe two or three batches. Because it's not really black is it, I'm sure it's purple, in that burgundy kind of way. So put the purple cabbage aside for a moment and accelerate your spiritual growth the Indonesian way.
Get your glutinous rice, pandanus leaves and palm sugar from the Asian supermarket. Despite its name glutinous black rice contains no gluten, I am absolutely sure. Pandanus is a strappy leaf, the Asian equivalent of vanilla, that imparts a pleasantly sweet fragrance to the rice, you can leave this out if you like, but it is worth chasing up in the freezer or fresh at the market. Palm sugar is sold in compressed cylinder shaped blocks, you can substitute dark brown sugar if you like.
Are you worried about the fat in coconut milk? Well the fats in coconut aren't as unhealthy as we have been led to believe in the past, just don't overdo it. There are some nasty coconut milks out there that are worth avoiding, I use Ayam brand, certainly don't go with light coconut milk, it contains things that are unhealthy despite the light label, always check the ingredients.
For me a cinnamon stick is preferable to ground cinnamon, not only because the flavour is better, but also because you can fish it out at the end and suck it clean, YUM. Is that disgusting? Sorry, I love cinnamon.
Sticky Black Rice with Coconut Cream
Ingredients
280 g Glutinous black rice
110 grams palm sugar
750 g water
2 pandanus leaves
1 cinnamon stick
3-4 slices of fresh ginger size of 50 cent piece
270 ml can coconut cream
Method
Remove the measuring cup (MC)
Place a medium sized bowl on top of the Thermomix and set your scales to zero
Weigh 280g of glutinous black rice into the bowl, cover with water a leave to soak overnight.
The next morning discard the soaking water, it will be a spectacular bergundy.
Bash your palm sugar with a rolling pin or something heavy to break it up and weigh 100g into the Thermomix bowl.
Pulverise the sugar on speed 9 for 5 seconds
Add the soaked black rice, cinnamon, ginger and pandanus leaves (knot the leaves into a ball so that you can get them out easily after the cooking is done)
Add 750g of water
Cook in reverse at 90 degrees for 60 minutes, speed 1.5
At the end of the hour the mixture should be thick and soupy, transfer to the thermoserver and stir in the coconut cream.
Fish out the pandanus, cinnamon and ginger replace the Thermoserver lid and allow the rice to cool.
Or pour yourself a big bowl and enjoy warm
Transfer the leftovers to the fridge where it will set.
Serve with sliced banana, mango or papaya.
Serves 4
