Kaya toast

Ingredients

• White bread8 slice
• Eggs for the kaya4
• Coconut milk250 ml
• Sugar150 g
• Pandan leaves3
• Butter — cold120 g
• Eggs to serve8
• Dark soy sauce4 tsp
• White pepper1 tsp

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Knot the pandan leaves and warm them with the coconut milk until hot, without boiling.

   10 min

2. 2

   Whisk the eggs with the sugar until it dissolves and strain the mixture through a fine sieve.

   8 min

3. 3

   Pour the warm coconut milk into the eggs in a thin stream, stirring without stopping.

   6 min

4. 4

   Cook the mixture over a water bath for forty minutes, stirring with a wooden spoon, to the thickness of jam.

   45 min

5. 5

   Remove the pandan leaves and cool the kaya completely; it thickens further.

   20 min

6. 6

   Boil the eggs exactly six minutes and serve them in a bowl with soy sauce and white pepper.

   10 min

7. 7

   Toast the bread crisp, spread it with kaya and lay a cold slice of butter between two pieces.

   8 min

About the dish

Kaya is cooked over a water bath and stirred without stopping for forty minutes. Over direct heat the eggs scramble and instead of a smooth jam you get a sweet coconut omelette.

The butter goes on as a cold slice rather than spread. It should melt in the mouth rather than soak into the bread — the contrast of cold butter and hot toast is the point.

The eggs are boiled exactly six minutes and served in a bowl with dark soy sauce and white pepper. They are not salted: the soy is both the salt and the flavour.

Worth knowing

• — The mixture must be strained before cooking. Chalazae leave lumps, and smoothness is the mark of good kaya.
• — Kaya keeps two weeks in the fridge. Make a large batch: forty minutes of stirring is only justified by volume.
• — The bread is toasted to a rusk rather than merely coloured. A soft toast goes soggy under the kaya and butter within a minute.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

520 kcal

Protein

18 g

Fat

32 g

Carbs

42 g

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