FollowOur neighbour has an entire garden filled with pandan plants, growing right on the ground. The pandan leaves are almost like wild weeds — so green, thick and incredibly luscious!
So whenever Dad needs pandan leaves for baking or cooking and our garden doesn’t have enough, he often asks our neighbour for some. A few days ago, our neighbour generously gave him a whole bunch of pandan leaves.
Dad then spent practically the entire afternoon in the kitchen washing, chopping, blending and squeezing the leaves to extract the pandan juice. To do this the old-fashioned way, he blends the pandan leaves with some water, then pours the mixture into a muslin cloth and squeezes out every drop of juice. Talk about labour intensive! 😂
He then stores the pandan juice in the fridge overnight. By the next day, the water and the concentrated pandan essence separate naturally. Dad pours the pandan water into another container to use for cooking, while the concentrated pandan essence goes into the freezer. That precious green essence will eventually be used for baking cakes and making pandan kaya. 💚
Dad is 83 years old, and this is the only method he knows. But I have to admit, there is something rather satisfying about doing it the traditional way. No fancy gadgets, just pandan leaves, water, a blender, a muslin cloth and plenty of elbow grease! 😆
I also kept some of the pandan leaves to make pandan tea. Sometimes I brew them on their own, and sometimes I mix them with flowers, green tea or black tea. The aroma is absolutely wonderful, and the tea tastes terrific! 🍵🌿
And we don’t waste the pandan pulp either. After Dad has squeezed out all the juice, we put the leftover pandan pulp into containers and place them in our cars and bathroom. They make everything smell so fresh and naturally fragrant. Apparently, pandan is also said to help repel cockroaches, so that’s another little bonus! 😂
From one big bunch of pandan leaves, we get pandan juice, pandan essence, tea, natural air freshener — and hopefully fewer cockroaches. Now that’s making good use of a gardenful of pandan! 🌿💚
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| Pandan leaves + rose tea for mum; pandan leaves + rose + jasmine + blue pea flower tea for me.
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| My pandan rose jasmine blue pea flower tea. So aromatic. |
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| Freshly extracted pandan juice before separating the water from the essence.
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| Pandan pulp as air freshener for our bathrooms and cars
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| Big bunch of pandan leaves from our neighbor. |
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