As Songkran (Thai New Year) approaches, Palisa Anderson and her mum, Amy Chanta, are busy rallying the troops to make a dazzling array of traditional sweets for Sydney’s Chat Thai. The country’s best-loved festival kicks off on Friday 13 April and stretches anywhere from three days to multiple weeks. “In Thailand, the richer you are, the longer you mark Songkran,” says Anderson. “We’ll be celebrating until the end of the month, but more so everyone has longer to try these things!”
The sweet star is undoubtedly thong noppa goa, or “nine gold treasures”. So, more than one to be accurate, but as each dessert confers a blessing on the recipient, the nine auspicious sweets are often served together for maximum blessing effect.
They’re also all (bar two) crafted from egg yolks, lending an auspicious golden hue to each beautifully formed item, and they often glimmer with gold dust or gold leaf.
Just don’t expect the same taste. Each shape is prepared slightly differently for a masterful exercise in flavour and texture. “It depends on the ratio of the sugar syrup they’re cooked in to egg yolks, as well as the cooking method,” explains Anderson.
The nine auspicious sweets are often served together for maximum blessing effect.
Foi thong, for example, involves flicking fine threads into boiling syrup, which are bundled into a neat parcel. “It’s one of the sweeter ones, with lots of syrup.”
Met khanun, by contrast, is stuffed with mung bean and shaped like jackfruit seeds. “It’s chewier and more fragrant.”
These egg yolk-based desserts are credited to Maria Guyomar de Pinha, a Portuguese descendant and Thai royal palace cook during the seventeenth century, who combined European pastry techniques and desserts with local ingredients.
Making these sweets is laborious and time consuming – the syrup alone requires a day to prepare an essence of jasmine flower before boiling with sugar and pandan – so they’re more commonly purchased than homemade these days. Even Chat Thai is only offering four of the nine treasures, available at the Haymarket eatery, for a special Songkran afternoon tea and as a snack or dessert at the other restaurant locations.
Other specialities, such as watermelon with fish floss and palm sugar, and chor muang, pretty purple rice flour dumplings filled with caramelised chicken and peanuts, will be on tempting offer too.
Anderson’s Songkran favourite is a sticky rice toffee known as kalamae, made from coconut, palm or toddy sugar syrup cooked in a big brass pot over a low charcoal fire, then mixed with sticky rice flour. “I just love the imagery of the whole village making this together,” she says. “The sticky kalamae signifies the binding of you to your family and your family to the community.”
Songkran sweets are also used to pay respect. Throughout the festival, families spend mornings at temples for prayer or meditation, and offer food, including sweets, to monks for eating before their daily fast.
As we discuss the sugar syrup-soaked selection, Anderson’s excitement for Songkran is palpable. Following two years mourning the death of King Bhumibol Adulyadej and ensuing political turmoil, there’s been a resurgence of deeply nationalistic sentiment throughout Thailand, including a revival of traditional garb.
“The country is now banding together,” says Anderson. “We’re jumping on board and staff will be donning traditional clothes all month!” This year’s Songkran, a festival of transformation and sharing of goodwill (karma), couldn’t be timelier.
In this column, Dessert Date, I scour bakeries, patisseries and dessert joints from around the world for the hottest sweet trends, up-and-coming ingredients and game-changing pastry techniques.
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