Chewy Pandan Mochi Ice Cream :)

OK I have been wanting to share one of my favourite recipes with my readers and have finally got round to making this desert again and photographing it. Limpeh's chewy pandan mochi ice cream draws inspiration from Japanese, Taiwanese, Malaysian/Singaporean and Turkish inspirations. Let me break it down for you as to what came from each culture.

Limpeh's Chewy Pandan Mochi Ice Cream

Now the Japanese have been making mochi ice cream since 1981 - and this is a stunningly tasty snack where a lump of mochi is stuffed with ice cream. Now I have tried making this is my kitchen and it's just impossible - it needs to be made in a factory where the temperature is kept at like -5 degrees so the ice cream doesn't melt. Ice cream tends to melt at room temperature and it can get very, very messy. Trust me, I am speaking from experience here. Just spend the money and get it at the shops, it's well worth it.

The Taiwanese love mochi or "muah chee" 麻糬 as it's known in Hokkien. The local version I grew up with in Singapore was often served with sugar and crushed peanuts, not the most imaginative recipe to be honest and I wasn't that impressed. Now in Singapore and Malaysia, the pandan leaf is used in many different dishes: pandan chicken, cendol, pandan cake, pandan pudding, kuih dadar amongst others - but I have never seen anyone combine pandan and mochi.

Singaporean Muah Chee

As for the Turkish influence, well - the Turkish make stunningly good ice cream and it's quite different from European ice cream. I totally fell in love with Turkish ice cream when I was working in Istanbul - it was my after work treat. Dondurma is devilishly sticky to the point where it can be described as chewy. I have always been fascinated by the chewiness of dondurma and have always tried to find something to replicate that chewiness and I found it in frozen mochi. Frozen mochi is nothing like muah chee - it is much more similar to very sticky dondurma.

This recipe is simple and does not require much effort - however, you must have that one special ingredient: glutinous rice flour. It's not rice flour, it's glutinous rice flour that one uses for mochi. If you use rice flour, it won't work, okay? So check that you have the right flour before you begin. What I love about this recipe is that none of the ingredients are expensive yet the end result is oh so incredibly good and original. You need:

• 1 cup of glutinous rice flour
• 1 cup of sugar (reduce the amount of sugar if you don't wanna get fat) 
• Three quarters of a cup of water 
• A few drops of rice vinegar
• A few drops of pandan essence (the kind used for Pandan cake) 
• 1 litre tub of vanilla ice cream (but eat at least a cup or 2 of it first) 
• A pair of very strong kitchen scissors 

Step 1: Combine the glutinous rice flour, sugar, vinegar and water in a big bowl (make sure the container is microwave friendly). Stir vigorously until all the flour is dissolved.

Step 2: Add the pandan essence - now some pandan essence come without the green food colouring and all you get is the taste and smell, but ideally, you want the one that turns everything bright green.

Step 3: Mix well until you have an evenly green mixture with no lumps of flour.

Step 4: You need to cook the mochi now. Check the settings of your microwave oven, you want it at approximately half the power you use to cook things. I know it varies a lot depending on the make and model of your microwave, but basically you want to cook it with low heat. If you allow the mochi mixture to boil, you're going to end up with mochi everywhere and don't blame me when you have to clean up that sticky mess. Eurgh. It's better to play it safe and use very low heat/power to gently warm up this mixture a little at a time until you thicken it into the right stickiness. Traditionally mochi is steamed but that's just too hard work and takes too long. Some recipes online will ask you to cover the mochi with a layer of cling film when cooking it in the microwave. Frankly, I've tried it both with and without the cling film and found that it makes no difference, so why bother.

After I zapped it at half power for 2 mins, I took it out and it looked like this:

Step 5: As you can see, the middle is still very liquid but the outer edges are turning solid. What you need to do now is to vigorously work the mochi - with a big spoon, stir it hard until you are a smooth mixture, combining the liquid and solid parts.

Step 6: Return the bowl to the microwave and zap it on half power for another minute and repeat the process until there is no more liquid left to blend in and you are left with a solid, sticky mochi. In total, for this batch, I only had to zap it for 4 minutes on half power for it to reach the right stickiness with a lot of vigorous stirring. You can't afford to be lazy if you want a smooth mochi with a good texture - work that mochi!

Step 7: Now you have to let the mochi cool as it would be rather hot after being been cooked in the microwave. Hot mochi + ice cream = gooey mess, not good. Put the mochi in the fridge and cool it for at least 2 hours until it is cold.

Step 8: If you haven't already eaten some of the ice cream, eat at least a big cup of your vanilla ice cream. You need the space in the tub for the mochi you're about to add into the ice cream. Yeah I know I ate more than a cup in the picture below ... I bought the ice cream several days ago and just never got round to making the mochi and I just kept eating the ice cream.

Step 9 : Once the mochi is chilled, put the whole lump of mochi into the ice cream and return the tub of ice cream into the freezer at once to freeze the mochi for at least 2 hours. I can't stress this enough - do NOT put hot mochi on ice cream.

Step 10: After 2-3 hours, take the mochi and ice cream out of the freezer. At this stage the mochi is ideal for cutting. At room temperature, it is too sticky to work with. But when it is completely frozen, it is too hard to cut. At this semi-frozen state, you can cut through that lump of mochi easily with a pair of strong kitchen scissors. Remember, when you do this step, you have to act super fast - you don't want the ice cream to start melting because it is out of the freezer. Cut the mochi up into little pieces no more than 1-2 cm long. Make sure you do not leave big chunks.

It should look like this if you've done it right, your hand will ache I assure you. Mix the mochi and the ice cream together well.

Step 11: Smooth out the ice cream mix and return it to the freezer overnight to allow the mochi and ice cream to freeze properly.

Step 12: Once you have allowed the ice cream to freeze properly for at least 6-8 hours, it is ready to serve. You can even make the desert more interesting by topping the ice cream up with fresh pandan mochi that has not been frozen. Delight your guests with this original recipe - the frozen mochi is nothing like the 'muah chee' you're used to as it becomes quite hard and chewy when frozen. As you bite into it and start chewing, it will thaw in your mouth and release the flavours of the pandan.

The pandan and vanilla goes really well together - but you can also create mochis of other colour like pink with rose syrup, orange with marmalade, red with raspberry/strawberry jam or purple with blueberry jam. You can then have a mochi ice cream with multi-coloured mochi pieces in there and if you're having a party, that would definitely blow their minds. Admittedly, that's a lot of work but hey, it's worth it if you're trying to impress. I have been making mochi for a while already and have experimented with various different flavours - my favourite is green tea with jasmine but I found mochi a bit plain on it's own and I guess that's why it is never served on it's own, but usually with something else (ice cream, peanuts etc).

Limpeh's homemade mochi.

Let me know how you get on with this desert - Limpeh has plenty more original recipes to share! :)