Malvina Reynolds singing “Little boxes” (1962) | Pandan origami: little boxes
| Filling ideas & recipes | Coconut Jelly Recipe
Years ago, I was in Singapore teaching UX foundations and research methods at the Orchard Hilton and being served at lunch these cute little Thai khanom tako coconut milk-topped jellies set in wee “baskets” made of pandan leaves. I was preoccupied with class conversations so didn’t get to examine the jellies as much as their packaging—which I took a photograph of, promising myself to recreate in some form at some future point.
SEVEN whole years later, I finally have enough pandan growing in the garden to invite snarky remarks from the mango-growing husband about how, at least, I get to eat those growing mangoes. Touché and ouch! So I harvested a bunch of pandan leaves and figured out how to fold together these adorable little boxes, which takes some mathematical doing because you need five segments with the length of each needing to be double the width of each half leaf. This can be eye-balled, but that takes some practice, too, and the best boxes are ones which have a criss-crossed base with no central gap, and that certainly takes both precision and practice. Then the whole thing is held together not by staples (goodness help me) but with a small, thin stick, which is every bit as effective and miles more elegant.
But then for the filling. What had it been again? Thai khanom tako (or kuih tako as it’s also known) traditionally has two layers, one with tapioca, one with coconut, both thickened with a combination of tapioca, rice and Hun Kwee flours–though that last is mung bean starch, not a flour proper. Maravalli kizhangu is tapioca, rice flour is a local staple, but Hun Kwee Flour is not easily found here and I was in no mood to figure out how to extract starch from local mung dal. I’ve done these kinds of desserts before with just mung bean flour, but that just doesn’t work for either taste or color. So, what next?
With a distinct sense of how I was about to commence (commit?) a series of possibly unforgivable regional and culinary transgressions, I picked up The Way of Kueh, Christopher Tan’s most special and quite inimitable cookbook which a Singaporean cousin had kindly carted over for me recently, the book having come out in 2019 which is the year we’ll all remember as the one before the pandemic killed (my) travel. Found kueh awol awol, knew I would find the last of the maravalli kizhangu that are still in season, and figured that those would set in these pandan moulds as well as any jelly.
And so you have what’s before you now: an almost halvah, for the way the pandan-flavored, tapioca-coconut milk filling is made (but sans the added fats and nuts), that should properly have been a classic Singaporean kueh, but filled into pandan moulds and steamed, became something neither quite Singaporean (though it is a kuih) nor really Thai (though it still is tako) but every bit from Deepa’s garden of dreamy delectable delights.
How to make little pandan boxes
Here are a series of still photos to show how the little pandan boxes are made via a simple series of cuts and folds, a little pandan origami.
“Why not just do a reel?” asked the boys. “Or a YouTube video?”
I’ll concede it is the Age of Reeling but I’m a stills-papa 😄. Got nothing against video for y’all who prefer it, and I’d like it noted that I was doing #rasamseries videos set to favourite snips of Carnatic music well before “reel” was anything other than an Irish jig or a roll of film. But I stopped when everything turned to movement because it was dizzying, because how can you possibly learn a recipe in 1 minute or less—and why would you want to?—and most of all because so much restless movement militates against what I seek and what I want my work to ultimately show: slow, stillness, silence.
Watch the still fingers moving because they are. Watch the leaf become a little box because it is. Stare and make it move as you will, for there’s magic in how you see, not just in what I do. Why do show-and-tell when you can evoke that?
T.S. Eliot’s “East Coker” comes to mind again. Many old Indian ideas in Eliot’s verse and it shows:
“I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.”
So here is the process in 12 steps, though your fingers may learn them in fewer.
1. Gather a bunch of pandan leaves. Choose leaves that are softer and more pliable, younger always better than older. If you’re harvesting your own, don’t cut them too close to their bases (where they are connected to the plant) as they tend to be tougher there.
Note the image of the cut leaf in the photograph below. That’s what you’re aiming for–4 segments that make the sides and base of each box, plus one halved 5th segment to overlap with the first and to fasten with a twig.
2. Align the leaves so that you line-up the sections with similar width–you will want to target these areas so that you wind up with a more uniform set of boxes.
3. Trim the broader ends of the stack so you can hold and stand them on a surface together. The tips can be mis-aligned; it’s the bottom lengths of the leaves that we want to work with.
4. Fold a leaf down the middle vein to crease. Keep the greener side (leaf top) on the outside.
5. Unfold, and the fold as you see in the images below, working from the trimmed broader end, so that you mark out a perfect square. Crease this well. I’m calling this the “width crease.” This crease should now be the same width as the length of leaf folded.
6. Now unfold again, fold the leaf down the middle again as in step 4, and using the “width crease” in step 4 as a guide for length, fold the leaf into a zig-zag 4 times.
You’re aiming for something like this…
7. Trim the leaf tip off …
So that when you open up the leaf again you can see all the creases like so…
8. Now use a scissors and cut along all the zig-zag width creases, but only halfway, until the middle vein/ middle crease (which you made in step 4).
9. Cut one half piece off a far end off completely like so…
10. Now the box should come together logically. Start folding from the end that has the whole leaf width intact. The middle crease becomes the bottom edges of the box. The cut leaf segments overlap into the box’s base. The fifth segment, half of which was cut off in step 9, becomes the piece that overlaps with the first to fasten and hold the box together.
11. Bring the fifth segment around the first to secure the box–and “pin” it with a small stick to hold together.
12. And there you have it: little boxes, little boxes, most certainly not of ticky-tacky…
Filling the little boxes
Do I get to do this? Suggest a range of possible fillings for these elegant little pandan boxes?
Moulds and shapes are signs of specific things, not arbitrary forms and these pandan “baskets” are signs and signals of something quintessentially Thai: the khanom tako. And yet food play opens possibility:
- There’s a halvah or two I may never set in a pre-made mould again [eg. Bombay halva, colored with coral jasmine]
- Sweetened sticky rice steamed in pandan boxes with butterfly pea floral impressions, awaiting sweet fresh mango? Yes please!
- Rasavalli kizhangu kali with a coconut jelly on top? Oh why not! [Or simply steamed in pandan boxes for flavor.]
- Pandan jellies with tender coconut bits mixed in–chop those up and pour the classic khanom tako coconut jelly on top.
- When it’s jackfruit season and the seeds come faster than the fruit, this poli filling set in pandan boxes and steamed with a coconut jelly layer on top–well, that might just take the kueh-cake.
- Kueh awol awol is always an option–you could follow the recipe for rasavalli kali here and simply substitute the purple yam for tapioca.
But now there’s this Peranakan-style “oven scorched” (ooh!) kueh calling from Chris Tan’s book and I promise to stick to the script this time!
To make the coconut jelly
Note that most of my suggestions above still finish with the coconut jelly layer–a small gesture to authenticity and the delightful play of textures that the jelly layer introduces. So, here’s the method to make that one.
First, make sure you have your pandan boxes already folded and half-filled with whatever filling you’ve decided on. Then you’re ready to make the coconut jelly.
To use as top-layer filling for about 8-10 pandan boxes, you’ll need:
- 1 can or equivalent fresh-expressed coconut milk (400ml/ about 2 large cups)
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 2 tablespoons rice flour
- 3 tablespoons tapioca flour
Note that it’s customary to use mung bean starch or hun kwe flour as well, but I’ve omitted it here with very decent results.
- Combine all the ingredients in a wide pan, whisk together to combine.
- Bring to a gentle boil over medium heat, whisking continuously to prevent lumping.
- The mixture will thicken in a matter of minutes. Continue cooking and mixing (change to a spatula to scrape the bottom of the pan effectively enough) until you have a nice thick jelly.
- Spoon the hot jelly over the existing layer of filling in the pandan boxes. Push into the edges–the jelly is viscous enough not to flow naturally in.
- Now allow this to set, preferably refrigerated, preferably for a few hours to overnight, although there’s no harm at all in eating it right off.
- To serve: top with flower petals, ground cherries/ Physalis peruviana or our very own wild சொடக்கு தக்காளி/ Sodakku thakkali/ Physalis angulata L which the birds and winds bring to us all year round.
