If you enjoy rice pudding, you’ll love these Thai packets of soft sticky rice flavored by coconut cream. Steaming in banana leaves lends an alluring fragrance to the rich rice, which encases soft banana and cooked black beans. The beans offer interesting texture and color contrast in these popular street snacks. According to legend, kao tom padt (also called kao tom madt) was all that some religious pilgrims had on their journey to visit the Lord Buddha. They presented their precious food to the Lord Buddha upon arriving, and that gesture continues today as these packets are still an offering at religious ceremonies. Thai cooks typically make these packets in large quantities and thus soak and boil a fair amount of black beans. For small homemade batches, canned black beans, drained and rinsed of their canning liquid, work fine. Omit the beans for nom n’sahm chaek, a Cambodian New Year must-have. You can also grill the steamed packets and serve them with the Coconut Dessert Sauce (page 221).
For coconut cream, spoon off the thick creamy plug from the top of an unshaken can of coconut milk. If you’ve just purchased the can, and it was jostled in transport home, let it sit for a day to separate. The Mae Ploy brand of coconut milk contains proportionately more cream than most other brands; use the left over “skim” milk to prepare other rice dishes. To get the 2 1/4 cups of coconut cream you'll need for this recipe, 2 (19-ounce) or 3 (13 1/2-ounce) cans of coconut milk should suffice. Pure coconut cream is sometimes available at Chinese and Southeast Asian markets; Aroy-D and Kara brand, packaged in aseptic boxes like juice, are excellent.
