Place rice in a bowl and rinse several times until the water is almost clear. Soak in water 30 minutes.
Whisk coconut milk, water, salt and pandan paste in a measuring cup.
Drain the rice well over a sieve and transfer into the rice cooker. Pour in the coconut milk mixture and add in the pandan leaves. Cook using normal rice cooker setting until the rice is done.
Turn off the rice cooker (don't use the "keep warm" function) and let the rice steam for 20 minutes.
Fluff up the rice with a spoon and let it cool until you can handle the rice with your hands. Scoop a bit of rice into a 9-cm ring mould (or a sunny-side-egg ring) and compact the rice gently but firmly (you want to make sure the rice stick together but not squashed into a mush). Adjust the amount of rice until each patty is about 1-cm tall. Repeat until you get 10 rice patties. (You may have some rice leftover.)
Heat a non-stick frying pan without oil over medium-low heat. Using a large spatula, slide the rice patties onto the frying pan (do this in batches). Cook for 2 to 3 minutes on each side until slightly charred on both sides. The rice patties are now ready for assembly.
NOTES
- We used boxed coconut milk (packed in carton) for the recipe. If you can get fresh coconut milk, good for you! Canned coconut milk will work too. If using boxed or canned coconut milk. Sometimes, boxed and canned coconut milk may separate (cream on top, liquid at the bottom), so it's best to shake the box/can before opening to make sure the contents are well-mixed together.- We used Koepoe-Koepoe pandan paste for the rice - a little goes a long way so don't add too much. Mixing the pandan paste into the coconut milk and water first will help dissolve the paste and make the rice colour evenly. If you don't have pandan paste, you can omit it, the rice will just be white in colour.- Alternatively, you can blend additional pandan leaves with a little bit of water and squeeze the pulp to get pandan water. Top up the pandan water with water until you get 1 cup of liquid. Use this to combine with the 2 rice cooker cups of coconut milk.- We used short-grain rice instead of long-grain Thailand rice because of short-grain rice's sticky properties which helped to hold the patty together. That being said, the rice patties are still pretty fragile so handle them with care! Because it's impossible to hold up the burger with our bare hands without the rice patties disintegrating, hence it is a must to wrap the burger up with parchment paper during assembly (think MOS Burger).