Meatless Monday with Susan Feniger’s Kaya Toast

Hello and welcome (back) to the Miratel blog for another Meatless Monday. We took the Meatless Monday pledge as part of our CSR business initiatives in support of reducing meat consumption one day per week (15%) to live in a more earth-friendly manner. We feature a new recipe each Monday to help promote and achieve this goal.

Today we are going to make kaya toast which is a traditional Singapore street food. Kaya toast is so popular that there are Kaya Houses, which are restaurants that only serve this dish. It is the perfect meal to have any time of the day, but it does make for an excellent dinner. This recipe comes courtesy of Chef Susan Feniger on the Food Network series The Best Thing I Ever Made. Let’s get cooking.

Ingredients Coconut Jam:

• 1 cup coconut milk
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 8 pandan leaves, washed and tied into a knot
• 1/8 teaspoon kosher salt
• 3 eggs
• 3 egg yolks

Kaya Toast Plate Assembly:

• 2 slices dense white bread, such as pain de mie or pullman, toasted on 1 side
• 1 1/2 tablespoons shaved salted butter
• 1 soft boiled egg, peeled or 1 soft fried egg “sunny side up”
• 1 teaspoon dark soy sauce
• Dash ground white pepper

Kaya toast image courtesy of thedeliciouslife.com

Directions

1. In a small saucepot, mix together the coconut milk and 1/2 cup sugar. Stir in the pandan leaves and salt and bring to a boil over high heat, keeping the pandan submerged in the milk as the leaves cook and soften. When the milk has come to a boil, remove from heat and let the mixture steep for 10 minutes.
2. Remove the pandan leaves from the milk, squeezing any excess liquid from the leaves into the milk. Discard the leaves.
3. In a medium stainless steel mixing bowl, whisk together the eggs, yolks and remaining 1/2 cup sugar. Whisk in the coconut milk mixture to form a custard base.
4. Place the stainless steel bowl over a medium pot of lightly simmering water. Gently cook the custard, stirring constantly with a rubber spatula, until the mixture thickens, 15 to 20 minutes. The final texture should have a thick custard consistency (a trail of the spatula should remain on the surface of the custard for more than 10 seconds).
5. Immediately remove from the heat and strain into a medium bowl set over a larger bowl of ice water. Stir until the custard cools, then cover and refrigerate until needed. This makes about 2 cups coconut jam, more than is needed for the remainder of the recipe. The jam will keep for 1 week, refrigerated.
6. Spread 2 tablespoons coconut jam evenly over both slices of the bread on the untoasted side. Then place a layer of shaved butter over the jam. Place one slice of bread over the other to form a sandwich.
7. Halve the sandwich, and then cut each half into thirds to form 6 even wedges.
8. To soft boil the egg, add the egg to boiling water. Cook for 6 minutes, remove and ice.
9. Pour the dark soy sauce over the egg and dash with the pepper. Serve the egg alongside the sandwich wedges.

This kaya toast recipe serves one but can easily be doubled or tripled as needed. Pandon leaves can be found at Asian markets and most likely in the freezer section. If you cannot get the pandon leaves, you can replace them with a piece of ginger or “3 tablespoons of minced young garlic.” Whether you use garlic or ginger simply “add it to the coconut milk and steep for 3 minutes and strain.” The dark soy sauce the recipe requires “is a slightly thicker soy sauce and is available at Asian markets.”

We encourage you to visit the Meatless Monday website and join us in taking the pledge to reduce meat consumption one day per week. It’s easy with delicious recipes like this one. Spread the word at work to promote the value of CSR business initiatives and make your green call centre, office, factory, shop, restaurant, hotel or salon even greener.

Enjoy!
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Miratel Solutions is a Toronto call centre, eBusiness, and letter shop mail house specializing in professional fundraising services including telephone fundraising, online fundraising, lottery services, donation caging, donation processing and other donor management services. We are committed to our CSR business values in all contact centre services and mail house operations and advancing the missions of the nonprofits we proudly serve.