Tapioca Kueh
Labels: 100% sugar, asian food, she bakes
Monday, July 02, 2007
One of the staples in Asian cooking is the tapioca root. It's not very pretty to look at, humble even but it's more useful than you think it is. You know the old saying, never judge a book by its cover? This would be it.
Tapioca, also known as Yucca, can be ground into flour for cakes or as a thickening agent, deep fried into chips (one of my favourite snacks), formed into sago pearls for desserts and even as a binder for pharmaceutical products. Or it could be grated to make this:
This was my second attempt. The first try was one soggy mess because Ms Smarty Pants here wanted to take the easy way out by buying ready grated tapioca. All would be well if the grated tapioca was not frozen. After thawing, it wasn't semi-dry and fluffy but just a lump of mud-like something. Still, I did not heed the warning bell going off in my head and proceeded with the recipe. Result: The taste was there, everything else wasn't.
So this time, I bought the tubers in its original form, still frozen but otherwise untouched. Upon thawing, I started removing the skin followed by grating. All bloody 1kg of it. As in most Peranakan or Malay cooking, I thought my arm was going to fall off from exhaustion. And to ensure success, I drained and squeezed out the excess liquid from the grated tapioca. I was most determined not to fail. Not after all that labour.
I was rewarded with this about an hour or so later:
Everything looking the way it should be. Lekker!
The only problem now is, even though baked in a relatively small 8" tin, it's still way too much for one person to finish. Any takers out there?
The Dutchess of Cookalot whipped this up at 1:22 pm
Karen: I especially like the ones with chilli and ikan bilis. Yum!
