Posted on: Wednesday, April 6, 2005
 |
LIGHT & LOCAL
Thai-style lite tapioca pudding
By Carol Devenot
A few weeks ago, my Vietnamese friends and I went to Chinatown. We wandered through the marketplace and one of the girls bought all of us Thai pudding. The pudding reminded me of the Thai tapioca pudding in my cookbook, "Island Light Cuisine."
This is one of the easiest desserts to make. All you need is a double boiler. If you don't have one, improvise by setting a smaller pot inside a larger one, or nesting a heat-proof bowl inside a pot.
Fill the outer part with water and bring to a simmer. Place the milk in the smaller pot or bowl and heat until scalded. Scalding is different from boiling: you heat the milk over medium-high heat and watch for tiny bubbles that form around the edge of the pan. Then it's ready to use.
In this case, you add the tapioca — a perfect time to start singing Don Ho's famous song. No fo'get to keep one eye on the pot and stir every so often. It only takes 15 minutes to cook.
This pudding is a healthier alternative to the traditional American-style tapioca pudding because it doesn't use dairy milk or eggs. I prefer to use fructose in place of white sugar because it is a natural fruit sugar that is absorbed more slowly.
Add red or black-eyed beans to the pudding and you can duplicate what they sell in Chinatown without all the fat and white sugar. It makes a wonderful pudding base for fresh fruits such as papaya, mango and lychee. I served it with canned mandarin oranges for a book-signing session. It was a hit.
Or try this recipe with Thai curry.
Thai Tapioca Pudding
In the top of a double boiler, combine the coconut and soy milk. On the bottom, add about 1 1/2 cups of water and bring to a rolling boil. Heat the milk until scalded. Add the tapioca and cook, stirring constantly to prevent the pearls from sticking to the bottom of the pan.
Cook this mixture until the tapioca is clear in color (about 10 minutes). Add the sugar or fructose and cook for 5 minutes longer. Cool in the pot by emptying the hot water out of the lower pot and replacing it with cold water. Stir in vanilla. Cool for about 20 minutes. Transfer the pudding to individual-serving glass cups. Serve warm or chilled. Garnish with a sprig of mint or strawberry leaf. Serves 8.
• Per serving: 149 calories, 2 g protein, 3 g fat, 29 g carbohydrates, 0 g dietary fiber; 60 mg sodium; 5 percent protein, 77 percent carbohydrates, 18 percent fat
