Banana & cassia bark jam, fresh seasonal fruits, salted peanut praline & lime coconut cream

At Farang this dish is more commonly known as ‘the Farang mess’, not just because it looks a total bloody mess but due to its similarities with the typically British dish ‘Eton mess’. However, ours was developed in the restaurant through an obsession to make the perfect meringue, whereas the Eton mess was developed by Eton college in 1893 to eat during cricket matches. Only time will tell if our mess is recorded in the history books in over 100 years.

Clearly it is in no way Thai but its something me and one of my chef’s Charlie Whatley have been having fun creating for a while now as we are always looking for new tasty desserts, this seems to be one where you can always add another element, first fresh jam and fruit, then praline, then meringue, then cream etc... Although we love making Thai desserts, sometimes it is fun to experiment with British cooking and baking techniques whilst using some banging Thai ingredients to offer unique dishes at Farang, available only from us.

I feel at Farang this is what we do best, being naturally non-authentic in our origin, I see introducing other techniques an obvious fit. After all I am British, I trained in British cuisine originally and as a nation, despite clearly having no idea how to successfully govern a country, we do make some cracking desserts. Generally, this dessert is a balance of textures, crispy, soft, crunchy and smooth, alongside a selection of flavours, salty, sweet, bitter, sour when balanced harmoniously the results are incredible, the beauty of this one is even if you fuck it up it has a high probability of tasting delicious anyway.

Ingredients

For the coconut cream

8 coconuts, cracked with a hammer and peeled to the flesh

(If you can’t be bothered to hammer coconuts today just buy 1 tin coconut cream)

2 litre, water, boiling

For the praline

50ml water

200g, white sugar

10g, peanuts, toasted and semi-pounded in a pestle and mortar

20g, toasted coconut flesh (use coconut that has been cracked for cream)

1 pich flaked sea salt

For the banana jam

1kg, ripe bananas, peeled and chopped into chunks

60ml, fresh lime juice, 2-3 limes

1kg, light soft brown sugar

1 pandan leaf, torn to release flavour

4 apples, peeled, cored and chopped

10g cassia bark, lightly toasted whole in a dry pan

For the salted coconut cream

200ml, fresh coconut cream

1 tspn, white rice flour

1 pinch Malden sea salt, crumbled as fine as possible

To Serve

1/4 pomegranate, prepped into seeds

100g prepped watermelon

6 physalis, cleaned and sliced into quarters

20g raspberries

20g strawberries

1 mango, peeled and chopped into mouthfuls

Method

1. Firstly, let’s make the coconut cream. Start by cracking the coconuts with a hammer and remove and discard of the outer shell. This leaves you with the inner flesh of the coconut which has an inedible skin attached to it. Using a peeler remove this skin to leave you with only the fresh, white coconut flesh. Next put this flesh through a mincer, or grate it and add to the boiling water, combine thoroughly using a stick blender for around 5 minutes. Once combined filter the liquid from the flesh by ringing it out in some muslin, or a cloth. Once separated place the liquid in the fridge and leave to cool. As it cools the cream will separate from the water, the white cream on the top is what you want. Keep the coconut water as it can be used to let out curries and soups or just drink it as its banging. Any leftover coconut cream can be boiled down until it splits (cracks); this can then be used as coconut oil (coconut crack) which we will talk about another time. Once finished take some of the grated coconut left behind and toast on a medium heat in the oven, until golden brown and crunchy.

2. Secondly make the peanut praline, place the sugar in a pan and melt on a medium heat, stirring constantly to ensure that it doesn’t stick to the pan. Once melted turn up the heat and continuously stir, until the mixture begins to darken and caramelise (around 6-8 minutes when boiling). Pour onto a tray with parchment paper underneath, lift up the tray and turn to the side using gravity to spread the mixture as thin as possible, then sprinkle with crushed peanuts and salt before putting aside to cool and harden. Once solid, hit it with a rolling pin to break up into portion sized pieces and then store in an airtight container.

3. Now for the banana jam, you will find it much easier with a sugar thermometer, however, not to worry if not, you will just have to keep a close eye out. Firstly, add the bananas, cassia bark, pandan, apples, sugar to a non-stick pan, cook out on a medium heat for around 35-40 minutes until the bananas have broken down and began to darken slightly, keep it moving from time to time or it will stick. Boil to 104-105.5 degrees (jam setting temperature), if not using a thermometer then look for when the bubbles get larger and the mixture thicker, you can see the change in heat bubbles in the pan, test by putting a teaspoon of jam on a refrigerated plate and seeing how it moves once cold, if it resembles jam and does not move around the plate once cool then bingo. Once happy with the jam consistency, add the lime juice and pour this straight into sterilised jam jars or into an air-tight container. The banana jam is great used as any normal fruit jam and keeps indefinitely in the fridge.

4. Lastly make the salted coconut cream. Bring the cream to a simmer and then add the rice flour and whisk thoroughly to ensure there are no lumps. Bring to the boil and then turn down to a simmer and cook out the flour for a minute or two, whisking constantly. Once the coconut cream has thickened add the pinch of salt and leave to one side to cool.

To plate, place the banana jam upon the coconut cream and top with some peanut praline, fresh fruit and sprinkle with toasted coconut to finish. Oh, and make sure it looks a mess yeah!

Cheers for reading and I hope you enjoy the recipe.

See you next time,

 Sebbyholmes