Kaya. Eating rich!

It's all about KAYA today. Everyone wishes to be kaya, even those who are already kaya wish to be more kaya. So what is kaya?

Kaya is a Malay word which literally means rich. As in wealthy rich. However, this post is not about wealth or riches - someday, perhaps. But today, I'd like to share about this absolutely wonderful jam that I've made, which I didn't even plan to make in the first place but having spent a week scouring a bunch of Asian groceries in Paris with no results and being in dire need, I've come to the conclusion that the solution is simple: make it myself!

Kaya or coconut egg jam - I call it a cross between jam and custard -  is a popular breakfast staple in South East Asia, usually eaten with toast, much like strawberry jam or raspberry jam or any of your favorite preserves. When I was working in Penang, Malaysia many moons ago, I would have kaya toast with half-boiled egg for breakfast before I started the day. The bread would be sliced very thinly once they are toasted, a special skill in and off itself - try halving a slice of toasted bread horizontally without breaking it! The toast would be buttered, then smothered with a generous amount of kaya, sandwiched with another thin slice of toast and finally, a sprinkle of sugar would be added on the toast. Mr. KayaToast would then slice the bread into narrow strips and serve with a soft-boiled egg that was always cooked to perfection. Dipping my narrow strips of kaya toast into the silky soft egg (to which I'd usually add pepper and a tiny drop of soy sauce) was sheer bliss and a great way to start the morning. 

Well, I didn't add the egg but this was a pretty darn good breakfast on a warm Parisian morning! I wanted a change from the usual butter-confiture-baguette breakfast from the neighborhood cafè, and with the high heat and humidity that have blanketed Paris the past week, having a breakfast toast with butter and kaya simply made me feel as though I was in Malaysia! Right now, as I wander and further explore the city and the neighborhoods like a local,  I find that there're lots of things about Paris - the people, the systems and modi operandi of public places (groceries, open markets, banks, phone and utilities, etc.), the crowd, the heat that blankets the entire city, causing one to start sweating as soon as one has just showered - Paris is, in more ways that I would have never guessed, more similar to Malaysia than to USA. Such a strange revelation!

Before the proliferation of preserved food, families used to make kaya from scratch. My grandmother was the Queen of Homemade Kaya. It's not too difficult to make, really - just four simple ingredients: eggs - lots and lots of them, coconut milk, sugar and pandan.

 You can tell from  the list of ingredients, even without tasting, that the custard will deliver a rich melangé of flavors - the coconut milk makes it creamy, the slow-cooked eggs and sugar lend rich caramely depths and the pandan.....Oh the pandan! So subtle yet it's what makes the kaya fragrant and brings out the coconut flavors even more. Pandanus Amaryllifolius, also known as Screwpine leaves, or its generic and more commonly used moniker, Pandan, is the name of a tropical plant grown abundantly in most South-East Asian countries mainly for its fragrant leaves. Known as the “vanilla of the East”, Pandan (sounds like pun - done; please click to listen to actual pronunciation) leaves are used to as a form of aromatic in a variety of South-East Asian, namely Thai, Filipino, Malay and Indonesian cuisines. It’s prized scent is a melangé of lemongrass, rose, orange blossom and tropical floral notes, a hint of vanilla and nutty flavors, all of this lending it its highly distinctive quality. Whilst the Pandan is used to augment the flavors of savory dishes like coconut rice and  coconut-cream curries, they are most widely used for the wonderful depths that they add to desserts. The leaves can be added as-is and the cooking process will slowly extract the aroma from the leaves but nowadays, Pandan extracts are readily available in stores and is the most commonly used form of this ingredient. If you like caramel au beurre salé (salted butter caramel) or creamy butterscotch, pandan kaya would be right up your alley!

Grandma's kaya was always smooth and if you've every made kaya or custard of any kind, you'd know that getting a lump-free, silky-smooth custard every time is no easy feat. She would slow-cook her kaya - steam - and this took long hours. As for me, lacking the time and the necessary tools in my tiny apartment à Paris, I opted to just cook my kaya in direct heat. So much for trying to save time; what should've taken slightly over an hour became an almost 5-hour ordeal! The electric stove in the apartment decided to go on strike (its prerogative, I suppose; this is France anyway) just as I bought the egg-sugar mixture to a boil. I have this thing against electric stovetops now. I know, they are sleek and seamless, easy to clean and all that but if you really want to cook well, gas stovetop has to be it. This electric stovetop in my apartment has been so problematic - it doesn't like the slightest drip of water or anything touching it surface and very often when I cooked, it'll decide to start "going disco" on me - lights blinking, oven alarm goes beeping and the entire thing just stop responding despite the countless times you press the on/off button. I would then have to just stop cooking - whether or not the food has been cooked - turn off the whole system, go read a book or even take a nap to allow the whole thing to cool down so that the circuitry will work again. So after at least 3 interruptions over a 5-hour period, I managed to take my kaya from this:

to this:

and finally to this:

Was that worth all the trouble? Well, if you consider that I couldn't find a single jar of good quality kaya commercially available throughout Paris (I think I must've searched about 10 different places!) and the fact that this brings back so many memories of family, especially my grandma and that immeasurable bliss as I savor that creamy, coconuty concoction during breakfast this morning, transporting me back to the days in Penang  - yes, it's worth every single minute even though it took me 5 hours all in all!

Here's what I did with my kaya, aside from saving it for my morning toasts, I baked a batch of pandan cupcakes and filled them with this luscious fragrant pandan coconut spread, my take on an old favorite breakfast item and an ode to the uniquely delicious morning kaya toast.