How to Make Brioche, Sticky Cinnamon Rolls and Philippine Style Ensaimada

Okay. I must admit that I am kind of running out of ideas to write. Not that my head is out of any recipes but usually, the best ones come out out of the blue mixed with a little traditionalism and creativity. Now, what do I mean by this?

Brioche...now an Ensaimada. Crosswise.

In recent months, one has seen the popularity of the "Cronut" which is the donut with the flakiness of a croissant - I have not yet tried this reputably miraculous morsel by Domenique Ansel whose reputation for desserts have skyrocketed since its introduction - but essentially this is the marriage of two traditional characteristics familiar to the dessert and sweet palate. Promoting it as a breakfast item was genius. Of course, the final proof is in the pudding and still, I have not yet tried the Cronut, but then, I am not willing to stand outside in the middle of the cold just so I can shell out ten dollars to get two pieces maximum of this reputable pastry. I heard that his next idea would be a chocolate chip cookie fashioned to a cup (baking it using a mold that fashions the cup like cookie) serving it with milk inside -- so much like a shot of milk with the cookie. Now, I don't think its that creative but then, as Mr. Ansel already made quite a reputation in the world of desserts and pasties, I am sure that this would already be a hit if not at least his popularity would make its sales skyrocket in the first few weeks or months of its introduction. 

The Cronut, a creation that's an instant hit in
the culinary circles of NYC and the whole world!

Falling in line for the Cronut.

But the point is this, sometimes the best things that come out of the food world are reimaginations of essentially old ideas. Also, another characteristic of successful food concoctions that make it popular among foodies is guided by the dictum, "if you are going to make something -- make it well." This explains why chicharron may be common out there - nothing compares to the quality and therefore popularity of Baliwag. Get the idea?

So, therefore, we come back to technique. Recipes are common and therefore thousands upon thousands of recipes that compete as the "right way" of cooking dishes whether that is adobo, afritada, menudo, relleno, pastel or even vanilla cakes, chocolate cakes, red velvet cakes etc. But if one really gets into it, the proportion of ingredients is just one thing but the procedure of bringing out the textures and tastes into the mixture of these components is another. The mastery of technique is what makes a gourmand.

Case in point - the brioche. Brioche is a high class of French bread. Marie Antoinette lost her head with it when she exclaimed, "Let them eat cake!" which is actually a misquotation because the original French was "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche!" Note - it was brioche and NOT cake. Anyway, even so, actually there was no record that she ever said the phrase. To my Filipino readers and poor peasants out there who ever thought that they haven't eaten brioche, think again. Actually, this is bread that is, unlike the ordinary French bread or baguette which is made with just flour, water oil and yeast, fortified with butter, milk, eggs and sugar. Thus, it is sweeter, richer, more nutritious and indulgent. Question is, have we ever had brioche before? Yes! Philippine style Ensimada (or Ensaymada) is actually brioche. Now - I qualified that - Philippine Style Ensaimada and not the Spanish Majorcan Ensaimada which does not have butter rather pork lard. Secondly, no Aling Maria -- there is no cheese in the original Spanish type Ensaimada.

The Brioche.  Eggy, sweet, tasty, buttery and soft Brioche.
Decadent? See next picture.

This lady should have been careful with her words.
She apparently lost her head saying,
"Qu'ils mangent de la brioche!"

But brioche served as slices from a loaf is not really as moist and melting as what the current thoughts we may have of the ensaimada. I recently had brioche in a French restaurant in NYC (Bouley) and was thinking it would be soft and moist but what I got instead reminded me of the old style Philippine Ensaimada which was sold with margarine and sugar being peddled in the streets of Manila by a pastry hawker with his products kept in two large cans used to contain lard balanced at the back of his bicycle. Remember those? And actually, as much as current Philippine Ensaimada has been reinvented as "Super Melt" or "Super Moist", the original texture of this bread is somewhat more breadier rather than a moist, soft, puffy and cottonlike that we have come to know today.

The Philippine Ensaimada is actually a type of
goodie that one can make with Brioche.

Because brioche is a very rich type of bread with its sweetness and buttery flavor, it can be transformed further into other goodies, ensaimada included. One of these is the ever-favorite "Sticky Buns" aka Cinnamon Buns.

In this recipe, I will show how to make the basic brioche bread. Once that is done, it can me made into Philippine Ensaimadas and Cinnamon Buns.

Brioche

• 1 tablespoon active dry yeast
• 16oz lukewarm water (equivalent to the amount of a can of evaporated milk
• 16oz evaporated milk (therefore, as above, equal to one can)
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 cup softened butter or margarine
• 2 whole eggs
• 1 or 2 teaspoons salt
• 7-1/2 to 8 cups all purpose flour (high gluten is best or bread flour)

Procedure

1. Dissolve sugar in the lukewarm water in a mixing bowl. Add yeast and stir until well mixed leaving it for about five minutes. This will "wake up" the yeasts and activate it with the sugar which is the substrate for fermentation and gas production.
2. With the yeasts activated, add the eggs, evaporated milk, salt and butter. Using a paddle or whisk, slowly stir the liquid ingredients until homogenous for about five to ten minutes. Never mind that the butter/margarine does not melt but it is best that it breaks up to mix with the liquids.
3. In this mixture add first two cups of flour and mix well using the low speed of your mixer. A batter will form in which the next two cups of flour are slowly added to incorporate well as mixer continues its mixing action. The batter would become stiffer and it is this point that the whisk or paddles may be changed to the dough hook.
4. Still at low mixing speed, add the remaining cups of flour slowly but continuously to make a resilient dough. Do not forget to use a spatula to scrape the sides of the bowl so that the flour and dough that sticks on the bowl would be mixed in the dough as well. As the dough gets stiffer, it would "climb" the dough hook and sometimes reach the mixer itself. If this happens, just turn the mixer off to remove the dough and then turn it on again to continuously use the dough hook at knead the dough as it becomes more resilient to touch. The dough is ready when it is dry and non-sticky to the touch of the fingers with light pressure.
5. Remove the bowl from the mixer and cover with wet towel or cling wrap to prevent dryness as the bowl is placed in a warm place such as the microwave oven or a warm oven (Tip: preheat the oven to about 200F then turn it off). Leave the dough alone to rise until double in bulk (about an hour or so).
6. Once double in bulk, "punch" down to release gases and cover once more to leave to rise until again double in bulk (second rising).
7. After the second rising, it is ready to be divided into four loaves leaving them in bread loaf pans and let rise for until double in bulk then bake in a preheated oven of 400F for about twenty minutes.

The Cinnamon Roll - yet again, another creation
that could be made with the Brioche.

Sweet Cinnamon Buns

• 1 recipe of brioche as above after the second rising
• LOADS of butter
• LOADS of powdered cinnamon
• LOADS of brown sugar
• 4 cups chopped nuts

Procedure

1. Fashioning the dough into a long loaf, divide into two.
2. Using a half of the dough at a time, flatten each piece using a rolling pin with the stretching motion of the hand and fingers in order to "spread" the dough as wide as possible.
3. Spread liberally some butter on the dough. Sprinkle evenly 2 cups of nuts then brown sugar and cinnamon powder. Do not skimp on the cinnamon.
4. Roll as in jelly roll, fashion the roll to a uniform diameter and divide into twelve equal parts. You can assure the equality of the sizes by first dividing the roll loaf in the middle then each half is again divided into half to make four cuts. Each one-fourth cut is divided further into three.
5. The first half would make 12 rolls. Each roll is then placed on the pan lying on its side.
6. Do the same procedure with the other half of the brioche dough.
7. Preheat the oven to 400F and bake for about 20 minutes. Serve warm with sugar & butter glaze.

Sugar and Butter Glaze

• 1/2 cup butter (1 stick)
• 1/2 cup powdered confectioner's sugar
• 3 tablespoons milk

Under low heat in a saucepan, melt butter gently. Add to this sifted powdered confectioner's sugar and stir using a wire whisk while adding milk by the spoonful's. One may choose to add more milk to make the sauce more liquid. Remove from heat and cool for a while to desired drizzling consistency. Drizzle on top of cinnamon buns that are inverted on a serving tray.

This is my Ensaimada in the baking tray.

Ensaimada with the butter and sugar topping.

Philippine Style Ensaimada

• 1 recipe of brioche as above after the second rising
• 16 slices of cheese: may use whatever cheese variety though sharper cheeses are preferred
• LOADS of butter
• LOADS of sugar

1. Dividing the dough to sixteen equal pieces using the half division method, flatten a piece of the dough and spread some butter taking care not to butter the edges. To this, sprinkle sugar and apply a slice of cheese. Roll like a jelly to resemble a cigar. Twist and roll this cigar like dough with fillings into a whole bun. And place in a baking pan. Do this for the next remaining 15 pieces.
2. Let the prepared rolls rise until fluffy (double in bulk) and bake in a 400F oven until golden brown.
3. Remove from the oven and cool. Once at room temperature, spread some butter on top and sprinkle some more sugar and top with grated cheese. Variations include adding slices of ham or salted duck eggs on top.

   

   My sister, Elieza and I enjoying the
   newly made ensaimada.

How to Make General Tso's Chicken ( 左宗雞)

And now for an article about "pseudo-Chinese"dishes. 

My brother recently gave me a message to demonstrate how to make General Tso's chicken.  My reply, "Oh! That's easy!  I made it before and certainly I can demonstrate it now!"  So there.  That is the main reason for the post.  It is part of a request line. 

General Tso's Chicken and it's Deadly Allure.

Anyway, the very first time I had this dish was in a little town of Pittsfield, Massachusetts where my best friend, Dr. Philip King, Jr, nephrologist was living then while doing his residency in the Berkshire Medical Center.  Now, up to that point, the most Chinese I had was in Manila where the Chinese dishes are more authentic though they may be Fujian or Taiwanese inspired.  In the United States, they are more Hunan and Cantonese inspired; but more than that, American. 

Thank you, Philip for introducing me to this
"Weapon of Waist Destruction".

Now, what do I exactly mean by that?  My Asian friends and audiences would probably know more that Chinese dishes may contain meat and unless they are exactly meat dishes, would contain more vegetables.  Of course, we expect meat dishes to be primarily meat.  But going back to the dishes that have vegetables and meat like, for instance, Moo Goo Gai Pan (Chicken with Mushrooms), the dish would have more vegetables than meat.  But in American Chinese, it seems that the reverse is true.  The next feature is that the flavor is more intense rather than delicate.  Take for example, Sweet Sour Pork - one needs to sample this dish prepared in Manila in a Chinese restaurant and in an American Chinese restaurant.  Two things are apparent: the Sweet Sour pork in Manila is more delicate, with a hint of five spice (reminiscent of the style of Fujian cuisine) and deep-fried with a coating of corn or cassava starch, containing sautéed peppers, onions, carrot and sometimes pineapple; as opposed to the American style which the meat chunks are deep fried with a coating of batter, the sauce is sweeter than sour but intensely sweet/sour with no accompanying vegetables.  My reaction: shock and one description: dull. 

American Style Sweet Sour Pork.  This
includes only the pieces at the left,
not the veggies at the right.

Hokkien Inspired Sweet Sour Pork as
served in restaurants in Manila.

General Tso's chicken is somewhat similar as well - but NOT dull.  No...not dull at all in fact, it is addictive!  The reason is four-fold - first the chicken is made from fatty cuts of dark meat like thighs, which I insist not only because it is a cheap cut, but it contains fat and fat and more fat which help in t he crisping process while frying.  Second, the coating is not a dull batter (typical of Cantonese they say) but a generous dusting of tapioca starch with rice flour, the latter helps in further crisping of the fried chunks of chicken. Third, the spicy, salty, tangy, thick indulgent sauce to coat the chicken is just a delight.  Need I say more? Well, fourth, the bite of the fragrant well toasted dried red Chinese chilies just add to the excitement of it all.  Of course, the broccoli is just to mask all the guilt after eating all three thousand calories of it.  And while there is a serving of rice on the side which should be the primary staple of the meal with the chicken just to flavor it, well, com'n! -- Who eats the rice?!  This is America!  I think General Tso's --  the sneaky reason behind the name is that it is an attack weapon of mass destruction through obesity.  And a Google search stated that General Tso is actually Zuo Zongtang (左宗棠) who was a victorious general under the Ching Dynasty and using the sneakiness of the dish through salt, sugar and fat, the chicken dish can just feed the citizens of target with unhealthiness that could lead to its destruction.  Hahaha, but again, I digress. 

General Zuo Zhong-Tang, to whom the
honor of General Tso's Chicken
was named.

This is what makes the breading.

And this makes the crispiness.

But enough philosophizing on the subject...on with the recipe. 

General Tso's Chicken 

Chicken: 

• 4 Chicken thighs, deboned and cut into bite sized pieces 
• 1/4 cup xiaosing or rice wine (dry vermouth is a good substitute 
• 1-1/2 cup or more tapioca starch or cornstarch (tapioca preferred) 
• 1/8 cup rice flour 
• oil for deep frying 
• 1 egg (optional for incorporation with chicken for breading) 

Sauce: 

• 1/4 cup light soy sauce 
• 1/2 to 3/4 or more if desired, brown sugar 
• 1/8 cup white vinegar (if desired as a sour contrast to the sweetness) 
• 1 tablespoon tapioca starch 
• 1 cup chicken broth (made from boiling the chicken bones with 1 cup water) 
• 5 pieces Chinese red chilies 
• 1/2 head garlic, peeled and chopped 

Your Dose of Health (Yeah, right!):

• 1 head broccoli floret 
• water to steam 

Procedure: 

1. Prepare the chicken by deboning then cutting into bite sized pieces.  Marinade with Xiaosing or rice wine (vermouth, if not available).  Salt and pepper if desired but the sauce in itself is salty enough.  You may also want to put a tablespoon of five spice powder for a Hokkien flavor 
2. Add beaten egg if desired.  But the water of the meat pieces is essentially enough.  Put in 1 cup of the tapioca/rice flour and dust the pieces well and leave for a few minutes to develop the coating.  Then, after a minute or so of resting, apply more flour and knead so as to incorporate the flour well into the chicken pieces and a breading is somewhat made. 
3. Meanwhile, make the sauce mixture by combining all the liquids in the sauce mixture and set aside.  Also, add water to the tapioca starch to make a flour solution. 
4. Fry all the chicken pieces and set aside. 
5. After frying all the chicken pieces, remove all the oil leaving about an eighth of a cup and saute the chilies and garlic until light brown and fragrant.  To this instantly pour the sauce mixture and cover to boil, stirring occasionally.  Once boiling, add the tapioca water mixture to thicken the sauce.  Add some more sugar or soy sauce to taste.  One may want to add a bit of vinegar to taste if a sweet sour taste is desired. 
6. Once the sauce is thick with the starch cooked, turn off the heat and throw in the chicken pieces to toss and coat.  Serve immediately with the broccoli florets on the side. 

How to Make Ginataang Langka na May Kalabasa (Coconut Milk Stewed Green Jackfruit with Butternut Squash)

While waiting for the next patient to arrive needing my services, I turn again to the computer keyboard to yet write another blogpost. Once again, turning to my father's Bicolano roots, I write something with coconut milk but what makes this dish a bit more interesting is its use of raw fruits as basis as vegetable.  What do I mean? 

 

In Asian countries, it seems common that fruits are usually ripe when eaten, however, when green, it becomes a compliment to main dishes or sometimes, even treated as a vegetable.  Bananas, for example, with its fragrant pulp is a fruit when ripe; but it is a starch vegetable when raw.  This is the basis why ripe bananas make good smoothies, banana cues, toddler  mashed food and even banana cakes and breads.  But green, they are can be boiled and mashed and serve as the starch of some savory dish.  Green bananas also is the basis of banana chips because of its high starch content - much like potato or cassava chips or any other root crop based chip.  (Terra chips is an example.) 

 

The fruit that I am going to discuss here with similar qualities is jackfruit.  Jackfruit (a.k.a. "Langka" in Tagalog) when ripe can be eaten fresh but can also be cooked in syrup or coconut milk favored with other spice essences like anise.  It is great on that milky concoction called Halo-Halo (Literally translated as "Mix-Mix" pertaining to the mix of sweetened things like mung and azuki beans and purple yam (ube) with gelatin, leche flan, sweetened langka, sweetened mutant coconut (i.e. macapuno) all in shaved ice with evaporated or condensed milk and even topped with ice cream and pinipig (crunchy rice krispies).  Now, Halo-Halo is another concoction worthy of great discussion because its individual components are unusual to the western palate and likewise the concoction itself is somewhat related to the shaved ice desserts of Asian countries especially Thailand, but I reserve this for another blog post.  Going back to the Jackfruit, the fruit is treated as a vegetable when raw.  Now, I do not think there is another region in the Philippines that uses the Jackfruit as vegetable except the Bicol region where my Father came from and grew up.  What is interesting is when one guesses which country has this culinary tendency, judging from the raw products it exports...the answer - Thailand, which incidentally is home to coconut milk based foods AND desserts! 

Ginataang Langka: coconut cream stewed

green unripe jackfruit.

 

This lady is standing in front of a tree bearing

large and usually ripe jackfruits.

This is ripe jackfruit.  Notice that between the fiber

separators is the meaty casings of the seeds.

The meaty part is what's edible in ripe

jackfruit.

This is the pulp of unripe green jackfruit. Notice the

immatureseeds. We use everything as vegetable.

This is sweetened jackfruit in heavy syrup.

Sweetened jackfruit is one of the components that
make this halo-halo dessert. Notice the
beans, palm fruit (kaong), leche flan
and ube (purple yam) ice cream to boot!

Coming from this observation, I said that there has got to be something Thai in the Bicolano soul.  Looking at various blogposts - using the internet to gather some useful and valid information; rather than finding out what's going on in the latest series of installments regarding Justin Bieber's breakdown - I found out that there is such a connection.  I found this entry from a webpage entitled, "Siamese Traders Introduced Thai Cooking and the Muaythai Boxing to the Philippine Region of Bicol". (http://www.mabuhayradio.com/noy-bicol-column/siamese-traders-introduced-thai-cooking-and-the-muaythai-boxing-to-the-philippine-region-of-bicol) 

 

The famed perfect cone volcano Mayon

in Legazpi, Albay.

Coconut trees are just everywhere!

This is copra - pieces of dried coconut meat

that is exported as raw material for the

basis of coconut oils.

"Basil Rossi, an Australian of Italian ancestry and who has a Bicolano wife from Naga City (in Camarines Sur), provided the answer. Rossi, who was a former museum curator in Singapore, said that Siamese (Thai) recipes, which were introduced by early traders from Thailand, heavily influenced the Bicol foods. He said the Bicol Region has many archaeological sites that yielded Siamese pottery pieces. He said also that some Bicol recipes were exactly the same, peppers for pepper, ingredients for ingredient, as those found in some Thai cities that he had visited. He said that he would discuss fully his findings with, and provide, me with the recipes if I visited with him in the Bicol Region or if he traveled to Los Angeles. (Editor's Note: Mr. Rossi died a year after his online dialogue with Bobby Reyes. Reyes unfortunately never met in person Mr. Rossi.) 

  

After Mr. Rossi died, I started a quest to find historical data to prove his assertion. Historian E. P. Patanne in his book, "The Philippines in the 6th to 16th Centuries," reported that a Robert Fox-led Philippine National Museum team found in 1959 in Calatagan, Batangas, pre-Spanish burial sites with more than 500 graves. The archaeological dig yielded some 1,135 pieces of trade pottery of Chinese, Annamese and Siamese make going back to the late 14th and early 16th centuries. The burial sites yielded beads, bracelets, gold objects and earthenware. A Prof. Olov A. T. Janse made the first systematic excavation in Calatagan in 1940. What Professor Janse found what that the Calatagan excavations revealed extensive Philippine trades with China, Annam and Siam in ceramics during the 5th century. It was logical to assume, in the absence of primary historical data, that these traders from China, Annam (now Vietnam) and Siam (now Thailand) traded with other areas of the Philippines, especially on the Island of Luzon, where Batangas is found. Batangas lies north of the Bicol Region, about 600 kilometers from the southern tip of Luzon, Sorsogon Province (the southern end of the Bicol Region). Batangas is also less than 400 kilometers from Camarines Norte Province, the northern-most province in the Bicol Region. 

  

Fox, together with Filipino archaeologist Alfredo Evangelista, undertook in 1956 an excavation in the Bato Cave of Bacon district of Sorsogon City. The artifacts Fox and Evangelista found consisted of burial jars and stone tools, which were carbon dated at 2,280 years old, plus or minus 250 years. 

  

In his book Patanne mentioned: "Another jar burial site was excavated in Sorsogon, where no Chinese trade wares were found but recovered were multicolored flat, round and spherical opaque glass beads." Patanne also wrote in the same page that: "The Aguit-it site in Camarines Norte containing jar burials have been excavated from 1982 to 1983. Recovered were over 200 earthenware jars and pots, bowls and plates, iron implements, glass beads and stone anvils." I said to Copper that Patanne's phrase, "No Chinese trade wares were found," implied that the artifacts recovered in Sorsogon were from Siam and/or Annam. "

An example of ancient Thai pottery.

 

 

Now, isn't that interesting?  So, which then explains what I found in the Asian store makes sense - a can of raw green jackfruit (not sweetened, not yellow) in brine.  This ingredient is the basis of the next vegetable dish I am introducing for my Father introduced it us kids in the seventies when he sliced some green jackfruit and asked my Mother to cook it in pork and shrimps with loads of coconut milk, ginger, garlic, chilies and another different ingredient - balaw. 

 

Balaw is essentially small shrimp that has been mashed, dehydrated, patted into cakes and left under the sun to dry to ferment further and thus resulting in a pungent, fishy, briny solid paste that stinks to high heaven but essentially delightful when added in coconut milk seafood based or flavored dishes.  Has anyone reopened a bottle of patis (fish sauce) that has been kept in the kitchen pantry for months between intermittent uses?  The concentration of the fish extract with the crystallization of the supersaturated solution of salt leads to very much the same thing.  It stinks to high heaven but just lovely when mixed with savory Asian dishes.  The closest among the varieties of shrimp pastes that resemble balaw is the Malay belacan but in the wiki description, in belacan "...the krill would be steamed first and after that are mashed into a paste and stored for several months. The fermented shrimp are then prepared, fried and hard-pressed into cakes."  I remember when I visited my Father's province years ago, the balaw was just pressed into cakes, left to dry out and ferment in the sun without frying.  But whether belacan or balaw, I find the aroma is quite the same. 

Balaw in the Bicol region looks like a

flat rounded block like this.

But this is the color. Both pictures here are

belacan.

 

I notice there is no other Asian originated label for this fermented shrimp cake that resembles balaw.  And balaw was not mentioned in the Wikipedia entry.  However, the article did mention a Portuguese and Indian meat dish which is based on vinegar mixed with shrimp paste called Balchao; now, was this the origin of the word balaw?  And guess who brought it to Indian cuisine - this meat dish that contains shrimp paste?  I thought it would be the way from the east; but no, it was from the west!  The Portuguese colonized Macao where this dish originated and then brought it to Portugal and then hence to India.  Unusual but that's how the influence route happened. 

 

I didn't think that a simple discussion of Coconut Milk with Green Jackfruit and Balaw would become so complicated.  Anyway - I am going to shut up now.  And now, off to our recipe. 

 

Guinataang Langka na may Kalabasa (Coconut Milk Jackfruit with Butternut Squash) 

• 1/2 head garlic, peeled and chopped 
• 1 thumbsized ginger, peeled and chopped 
• 1 small onion, peeled and sliced 
• 1/2 pound (1/4 kilo) chicken meat, sliced into bite sized pieces 
• 1/2 pound (1/4 kilo) pork, sliced into bite sized pieces 
• 1 can green jackfruit in brine, drained and sliced 
• 1 pound butternut squash, peeled, seeded and sliced into 1/2 inch cubes 
• salt and pepper to taste 
• 3-4 red chilies (Thai would do but preferably the Labuyo which is hotter) 
• 1 tablespoon (or two) shrimp paste (use equivalent amount of balaw would be more authentic!) 
• 1 package frozen Philippine coconut milk, thawed (1 can of Thai coconut milk will also do but does not yield as much coconut oils like the Philippine variety) 

The small but terrible Labuyo chili.

 

Notice how the Labuyo resembles the Thai
Red Chili in form, but not as hot through the
quality of hotness is somewhat similar.

Procedure 

1. In a hot wok, heat about an eighth cup of cooking oil and saute the garlic, ginger and onions till barely transparent.  Add the meats and saute further. 
2. Once the meats are half cooked, add the coconut milk, balaw, salt and pepper to taste.  Lower the heat and cover to boil. 
3. When boiling, add the vegetables (preferably squash first to half cook then add jackfruit later) and cover to simmer further.  Lower the heat to prevent burning the bottom as coconut milk thickens to a sauce.  This is where the variations come in: one may choose to simmer until the sauce is thick to desired consistency; others prefer a drier sauce where the coconut milk solids begin to gel and the coconut oils are beginning to appear.  This is known as "latik" which is very tasty and imparts a concentrated coconut flavor; however, be careful not to overdo it as latik burns easily and usually brown caramelized latik destroys the flavor of a savory dish.  Brown latik is best used as toppings for glutinous rice based desserts like "suman" or "bibingka".