Kaya

It's funny how sometimes you can read about something different on a blog, something that you've never seen before and then all of a sudden, all the blogs you read have a post on this something different and it makes you curious about what it tastes like. Or maybe this just happens to me. This particular something different was kaya, a coconut-egg jam popular in Malaysia and Singapore (according to Wikipedia). Almost Bourdain has a wonderfully informative post about it here.

Ellie's post also has a nice and simple recipe for making kaya, so I decided to give it a try myself and put my curiousity to rest.

I didn't have any pandan leaves, so I used some pandan essence in its place. This made my jam green! It was so much fun cooking something so gloriously green. D came over at one point and looked in the pan and then gave me quite a sceptical look. I had to show him the Wikipedia article linked about to prove that kaya can also be green. I still don't think he was convinced.

Luckily I was so tickled to be cooking something green, because it did take a long time to thicken and change consistency and it definately needed to be stirred almost constantly. Ellie said that it normally takes 25-30 minutes, but mine took a little longer. In hindsight, I think I needed a little bit more heat.

I really enjoyed it. It is quite sweet, so I only needed the smallest amount. I did try having my kaya on toast with some butter, but I don't like butter on toast when it's combined with another spread, so this didn't really work for me. Kaya on toast without the butter worked better.

Best was having kaya spread on scones. The sweetness of the kaya really worked well with the butteryness of the scones and it looked quite interesting too.