Pulut Tekan

Qi, my brother’s gf said she misses the Malaysian Kuih eaten with Kaya, which now I found out is called Pulut Tekan. Kuih basically means cake in the Malay language can be both sweet and savory. Thanks to Lily’s blog, I was able to find the recipe there. It was a simple recipe especially since I already have the Kaya (Coconut Egg Jam) part made a few days earlier!

“Pulut” means Glutinous Rice in the Malay language while “Tekan” means press. So, this Malaysia kuih loosely translates to Pressed Glutinous Rice and is often served with Kaya. The kuih has a blue white marble effect where by the blue coloring is actually natural. The natural blue coloring comes from a flower call Clitoria (Bunga Telang) but since I can’t get hold of it, I ended up using blue food coloring!

So, here’s Lily’s recipe. Her original one be found HERE.

PULUT TEKAN RECIPE

Ingredients:

• 500 gm Glutinous Rice
• 350 Ml Coconut Milk
• 1 Tbsp Sugar
• 1 Tsp Salt
• 2-3 Pandan Leaves, Knotted (Optional)
• 1/2 Tsp Dried Bunga Telang -(Reconstitute with 1/4 cup of boiling water) **
• 1 Large Piece of Banana Leaf

**Blue food coloring works fine too.

Method:

Wash and soak glutinous rice for 4 hours. Drain rice. Mix first 4 ingredients together and place them along with the Pandan leaves into a steaming tray and steam on high heat until rice is cooked. This should take about 45 minutes. Discard Pandan leaves. Remove 1/3 of the cooked glutinous rice into a mixing bowl, add a little of the bunga telang extract and mix well to obtain a blue glutinous rice.

Add in the remaining 2/3 cooked glutinous rice and mix lightly to obtain a marble effect.Using a piece of banana leave, press glutinous rice into a 7 inch square cake pan which has been lined with banana leaves. Cut a piece of 7 inch square thick cardboard and cover it with heavy duty aluminum foil. Use this as a lid and press it down on top of the pressed glutinous rice. Use something heavy (i use a 6 inch saucepan filled with water) on top to weigh down cake until cool and firm.

Serve the glutinous rice with some homemade Kaya; recipe HERE.

June’s Comments: Since I was not able to get my hands on the naturally blue color flower, I used some Wilton Blue coloring to get the blue hue. Slowly add the artificial coloring especially when you use the paste kind. A little goes a long way since the colors are more intense. If you prefer not to use artificial food coloring, you could just leave the cooked rice to be naturally off white or use other natural food coloring as substitute. Blue is just more original/traditional.

I pressed my rice into a 7 inch round removable bottom pan. It was definitely easier to remove the cooked glutinous rice after. I used my hands and a bottom of the glass to press the rice down and get a smooth top layer. The texture came out just fine!