Almond muachee – snack from the good ol’ days

Here’s a recipe which guest chef No. 1 tried out the other day. Feeling adventurous, he decided to make muachee one afternoon – a very simple glutinous rice cake snack, a streetfood usually sold by the vendors who go around on bicycles. These days, nobody does this anymore, but you can still find the occasional stall in the morning or night markets.

Usually, this would be coated in a sweetish gritty peanut mixture but since we didn’t have peanuts at home, the hero decided to innovate and use almonds instead. Not that he knew almonds cost twice the price of peanuts … oh, well. Never mind, as long as the muachee tasted awesome.

I also learnt something new as I had no idea the recipe required shallot oil. And when it’s someone else cooking for you, it’s always nice.

Ingredients

120g glutinous rice flour

1 tablespoon shallot oil

Dash of salt

2 tablespoons white sugar

180 ml water

70g roasted almonds, chopped fine (conventional recipe calls for peanuts)

30g sugar (you can add more if want this sweeter)

Method

Use three shallot, cut into rings, and fry in oil. Keep this oil aside. You can use the shallots to sprinkle over your other dishes.

Mix the 30g sugar and almonds together until you get a nice, even gritty mixture. Set aside.

Mix the glutinous rice, sugar, water and 1 tablespoon shallot oil together in a bowl. Cook this by steaming the mixture for about 10 to 15 minutes.

Remove from heat, then use a pair of chopsticks or a stirring paddle to stir around this mixture until it gets translucent and sticky.

Then, lift the sticky dough, drop this directly into the almonds, cutting it into small pieces along the way.

And that’s all there is to it! I reckon you can use normal vegetable oil too, but it’ll be less fragrant. Or, even add a dash of sesame oil. It’s pretty hard to go wrong with this recipe.