Recipe
Num Kom (recipe)
Glutinous rice flour dough filled with grated coconut, palm sugar and toasted sesame seeds, shaped into banana leaf pyramids and steamed.
This recipe for num kom (នំគម), steamed rice dumplings filled with coconut and sesame, comes from the Coin gourmand column of Cambodge Mag.[1] The dough of sticky rice flour holds a filling of coconut and palm sugar, sometimes with sesame or peanuts, and is wrapped in banana leaves folded into a pyramid for cooking.[2]
Num kom is made for Khmer New Year, weddings and Pchum Ben, a 15-day festival in which families bring food to monks for their ancestors.[2][3] The historian Sambo Manara links num kom to Uma, Shiva's wife in Brahmanic belief, and to Mea Ba, respect for mother and father.[4]
Ingredients
- 1 cup glutinous rice flour
- Warm water
- 5 cups freshly grated coconut
- 4 teaspoons black sesame seeds
- 1/2 cup palm sugar
- A pinch of salt
- Banana leaves[1]
Method
- Toast the sesame seeds over low heat. Turn the heat off, then add the coconut and palm sugar.
- Stir the filling together.
- Combine the rice flour, salt and warm water until they form a dough.
- Shape the dough into balls.
- Press some filling into each ball.
- Set each cake in the middle of a cut piece of banana leaf and fold the leaf into a pyramid.
- Steam the cakes for 15 minutes.[1]
References 4
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Cambodge Mag (Coin gourmand column), Gastronomy & Recipe of Cambodia : The succulent Num Kom
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Tamale Digest, Cambodia (August 2014)
- ↑ Lor Chandara, "Ancestors Remembered as Pchum Ben Ends", The Cambodia Daily, September 26, 2003
- ↑ CambodgeMag, Num Ansorm and Num Kom: Cambodia's Sacred Rice Cakes of Body, Belief, and Tradition
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