They’re everywhere — these little rice cakes with cane sugar drizzle: on the streets, in the supermarket, in snack stores from the upscale ones to the not-so-upscale ones. The only explanation for this is that people like them. A lot. And it’s not difficult to see why.
With these sweet rice cakes being so ubiquitous, I’d never learned to make them until I came to the US. Nobody in my family made/make them either. Many street foods — most of them, if you ask me — are best left to the pros. Pad Thai, for example, is not generally a family dish which people make at home. Nang Let (also spelled Nang Led) or Khao Taen (in the Northern dialect) isn’t either, though it’s possible that it might have begun in the Northern (or even Northeastern) region as a way of repurposing old, leftover sticky rice in the pre-microwave days.
But I had to learn how to make these, because they’re not available in the US. Trader Joe’s used to import them from Thailand, but they had dropped this product after a while — at least that’s the case with the stores in my area. This post is brought to you by — that’s right — desperation and deprivation. Continue Reading →
