Kaya

It's a weird thing. When you crave for something which you know is not easy to attain, you start to see it everywhere. And if you are like me, stuck in the apartment the whole day, with only the not so idiotic flat screen and lappie as your besties, then everything you watch and go and surf would somehow find a way to blast the thought to you. Then your craving get magnified by a million with no means to satisfy it. Which gets you slightly under the weather, or in my case yesterday, up and about.

The agenda on this week's crave list was kaya. Again, what was a subtle thought of how nice to have a simple breakfast with homemade style kaya and a cup of black coffee turned into a full blown craving when afc programs, reruns at that, started showing episodes related to kaya as well! It was like the program directors at the channel knew what I was I thinking about and went out all the way to tease me. Remember the nasi lemak craving I told you about a couple weeks ago, well this was the same! Suddenly, it was kaya on the telly whenever I chose to surf the channels!

And this morning, I had my fix! Thanks to my patience for a not so excellent effort to dish out kaya yesterday! It was an eye opening experience on how labour intensive kaya making from scratch was. That too, I halved the recipe I got from the net, not wanting to make that much and also I realized now that it was probably a good move that halved the cooking time subsequently. 

Inadequate utensils meant I had to improvise. I used the saucepan to melt the eggs in, I used the lacking in grams range measuring cup and eye guess work to measure out the sugar, I used a normal plastic strainer instead of a bag strainer, I used 3 chopsticks to create a pot stand in the pot for my double boil, and lastly I used rice cooker pot, well, as the smaller pot, for I was lacking a pot small enough to go into my self double boiler. They all seemed to be a little crude and made up to the unrefined way to cook kaya, but I had to make do with what I have.

The ingredients were easy to enough to get from the local supermarket, but difficult to authenticate due to language barriers. Sugar was simple enough, eggs were from the fridge but the coconut milk was from the box. That was the closest thing I could lay my hands on for a think coconut milk. I got the pandan leaves from the apartment garden.

The mixing process itself was easy. Kaya is like a three step process of mixing. Mix the eggs, then mix in the sugar, then mix in the coconut milk. The real challenge in this homemade goodness is patience. You really need to have lots and lots of patience if you wanted to make a nice smooth kaya. Time and patience. Overall, I took about half an hour to mix all the ingredients and another close to 3 hours to thicken and cook the kaya.

My first attempt was alright, I gave myself 5 out of a scale of 10. The taste is there, but slightly on the sweeter side. The kaya is not that smooth, at least not as smooth as those I had when my mother or late grandmother made them, and it's slightly watery. I wonder why. This morning, taking out the refrigerated kaya, the golden yellow was slightly on the paler side. But oh well, I still enjoyed the fruits of my labour tremendously at breakfast this morning. I am content, for now and the next 2 months, I hope.