-
1
Place the pearl sago in a bowl and cover with cold water and leave to soak for 30 minutes, then drain. Cold water is deliberate here — warm water would begin cooking the outer surface and cause the pearls to clump and turn glassy before they reach the pot. The pearls should be slightly swollen and no longer completely hard when you drain them.
-
2
Bring a generous volume of water to a simmer in a saucepan, add the knotted pandan leaf, then add the drained sago and simmer, stirring occasionally, for 5–7 minutes — the abundance of water keeps the pearls moving freely so they cook at the same rate rather than felting together into a mass. Watch each pearl: at the correct moment every pearl carries a tiny white dot at its centre and the surrounding sphere is almost fully translucent. This is where the dish lives or dies — remove the pan from the heat the instant that white dot is at its minimum visible size, because a pearl that has lost its dot entirely has overcooked and will dissolve in the mould rather than set.
-
3
Drain the sago immediately and discard the pandan leaf. In a bowl, combine the hot, drained sago with the strained dissolved gula melaka and the first-press coconut milk while the pearls are still hot, so they absorb the palm sugar flavour into their cores as they finish swelling rather than merely being coated on the outside. Stir until the palm sugar syrup is evenly distributed — the mixture will be fluid at this stage.
-
4
Pour the mixture into individual cups or a large tray, cover, and refrigerate for a minimum of 2 hours so the sago pearls bind into a cohesive, sliceable mass as they cool and the residual starch sets the surrounding liquid. The pudding is ready when it is completely cold and firm throughout — a finger pressed lightly on the surface should meet clean resistance with no liquid movement beneath.
-
5
Stir a pinch of fine salt into the thick coconut cream so that the salt sharpens the richness of the santan and keeps it from tasting flat against the sweetness of the pudding. Unmould the set pudding onto plates, or serve directly from the cups, then spoon the salted coconut cream generously over each portion at the moment of service — the cream must be cold and the pudding fully set so that the two elements meet as distinct layers on the palate.