Sticky Rice With Mango Sushi; Cheater's Version

Once at a Thai restaurant, I had "Sticky Rice with Mango" as a desert. This is a special rice, sweetened and flavored with coconut, served with fresh mango. Now, I'm not particularly fond of rice pudding (which this vaguely resembles), or coconut, or mango, but this was GOOD!

So I looked up a recipe. This is the bay area; I didn't have any trouble finding the special rice, or the coconut milk. But the cooking was ... complex. The sticky rice is supposed to be soaked, and then steamed (with actual steam, not like "steamed rice") It didn't come out very well...

So several years went by, and I started experimenting with Sushi. And I had an idea on how to CHEAT making sticky rice with mango...

Step 1: Ingredients

You'll need:

Short grain (sushi) rice. You should be able to find this anywhere.
Coconut cream. Yeah, the kind you get at a liquor store for Pinå Coladas.
Dried mango (or fresh, but that wouldn't be cheating as much!) This has been appearing in upscale gormet markets and such.
Rice Paper (optional). For the outer covering of your sushi, if you want. I've only ever seen this in Asian markets, so it may be hard to find.

Step 2: Prepare the Mango.

Slice the dried mango into pretty thin slices. Wet them an let them sit in a cup to hydrate slightly,
while the rice is cooking.

Step 3: Cook the Rice

Rinse the rice and put in a saucepan with an equal volume of water and 1/4 the volume of coconut cream. For example, 1/2 C wet rice, 1/2 C water, and 1oz Coconut cream makes about two rolls worth, and is a good size for a trial (although it's a bit tricky to cook such a small amount of rice.)

Cook as for normal steamed rice: bring to a boil, cover and simmer on low heat till the liquid is all absorbed (about 15 minutes.) Remove from heat and allow to cool at least until it can be handled without burning you.

You can refrigerate the rice for some time, but you may need to warm it slightly to get it to an appropriate consistancy to mold into sushi or ball shapes.

Step 4: Make Sushi!

This isn't an instructable in how to roll up sushi, and I'm not very good at it anyway. Arrange a thin rectangle of rice on a sushi mat, piece of rice paper, or piece of saran wrap. Lay out the strips of hydrated mango (or sliced fresh mango) in a line down the middle of the rice, and roll the rice around it. Of course, real sushi is a work of art, but you don't have to achieve "art" status to have something that's yummi to eat.

Or, just arange to get pieces of mango inside clumps of rice, "rice ball" style. There's already a nice Rice Ball Instructable

Refrigerate till near serving time. No raw fish, no meat, it should keep quite a while...

Step 5: Serve!

Slice the sushi rolls, arrange attractively, allow to warm up a bit (I think it should be "cellar temperature"; just a bit below room temp) and serve.