Asian Desserts

[Fat Guy]

Ed, I just plain don't like Asian desserts.

Can you help me to see the light?

[Jason Perlow]

What, you dont like Black Sesame Balls?

I just love saying that. Sticky rice is great.

[Fat Guy]

Sure, those are nice if you like one-dimensional over-the-top cloying goo. But that's exactly the problem I have with so many Asian desserts. Ed, please help me to understand.

[eatingwitheddie]

Ed, I just plain don't like Asian desserts.

Can you help me to see the light?

Let's all go to Wittamer in Brussels and forget the rest of this bull----.

Ed

[Fat Guy]

He's good, folks. He's very good.

[SobaAddict70]

Is there a reason WHY you have to like them?

Were you specifically referring to Chinese desserts, or Asian desserts in general? Important because its a wide range we're talking about here. Technically, Russia and Qatar are in "Asia".

In point of fact, Chinese desserts range from black sesame balls to sliced oranges to egg custards to red bean soup to the ginger custard that annchang described in another thread to eight treasure rice pudding to steamed tofu with honey...

Its not all cloying sweet goo.

SA

[Fat Guy]

Is there a reason WHY you have to like them?

That's what I'm trying to find out!

[Bux]

Fat Guy, are you asking Ed for a dispensation?

Did your fortune cookie say you had to like dessert? For years I've resisted them and now find myself actually opening them and eating half, although I'd rather wish they went away. In my forty odd years of eating in Chinatown, I think I can remember only two restaurants that offered anything other than oranges and cookies. There was a place we frequented that gave us almond dofu and Dim Sum GoGo currently serves a small custard at the end of the meal.

In Hong Kong, at a rather espensive and most diappointing restaurant, I had a wonderful mango pudding. It hardly compensated for the tough and over overcooked giant prawns of which we only ate about a half prawn between the two of us. When asked, my wife was quite candid about her dipleasure. So much so, that I expected to see blood seeping out from under the kitchen door when the order was returned almost intact to the kitchen. I was doubly relieved to see no sign of storm in the kitchen and not see the prawns on our bill. But the mango pudding was nice, though not so nice as I would expect of dessert in a French restaurant.

Full disclosure: I have from time to time seen a few other desserts listed on a menu, or more often the wall of a Chinese restaurant so my comments really apply to the complimentary desserts. I have to assume dessert is not a big thing in the average Chinese meal. I'd also note the far more sugar is utilized in cooking the savory courses than we'd usually find in the typical western meal.

[trillium]

snip

In point of fact, Chinese desserts range from black sesame balls to sliced oranges to egg custards to red bean soup to the ginger custard that annchang described in another thread to eight treasure rice pudding to steamed tofu with honey...

Its not all cloying sweet goo.

SA

Don't forget SE Asian desserts. Coconut custard, kaya jam, chendol (mung bean "noodles", palm sugar syrup and salty coconut milk on shaved ice), ice kecang, steamed rice cake wrapped in pandan or lotus at the lunar new year, pineapple pastries, all the nonya kueh, but especially kueh lapis, sago, etc. My favorite doufu fa is with ginger syrup instead of honey.

As someone with a butter and chocolate or fruits handicap when it comes to desserts the more subtle approach doesn't always win with me, but there are some Asian desserts I crave as much as a nice chocolate torte or apple pie. I think to enjoy them you have to appreciate subtlety and texture as much as richness.

regards,

trillium

[annchang]

Dear Fat Guy & Bux

The only thing I can say is come to Taipei and HK. There are millions kinds of Chinese sweets and desserts you will fell in love with.

You have to see the real thing by yourself.

Ann

[Bux]

The only thing I can say is come to Taipei and HK. There are millions kinds of Chinese sweets and desserts you will fell in love with.

That's a wonderful idea. I have been to HK, albeit but once and briefly, (just about a week including a side trip to the mainland) and enjoyed it tremendously. There was nothing I didn't like, but meals where for us the great draw. Dim sum alone could make my day in HK. Aside from my one disappointment at a restaurant listed by Patricia Wells as one of ther ten best choices in the whole world, we ate extremely well although I don't remember much about desserts or sweets. Patricia Wells revisited the same restaurant a few months after we did and wrote that she herself was so disappointed at how low it had sunk. Old guides and old restaurant reviews are unreliable.

[hollywood]

What's wrong with green tea or kidney bean ice cream?

[Fat Guy]

They taste like soap?

[hollywood]

They taste like soap?

[Fat Guy]

I'm attempting to goad Ed into delivering a lengthy discourse on the greatness of Asian desserts, but he appears to be impervious to my taunts.

[eatingwitheddie]

A few thoughts about desserts and the Chinese kitchen.

There is a substantial difference in the foodways associated with Western and Chinese sweets. When you start to think about what we in the West venerate dessert wise, thoughts turn to great bakeries, chocolate makers, and wonderful ice creams and similar concoctions.

I think that there are some really important points to be made right at the beginning of a discussion aboout Chinese desserts.

Chinese food has developed with with a emphasis on wok cookery. It use high heat, but for a very short period. With the exception of large, almost communal roasting boxes for barbecuing meat and poultry, we're talking about a cuisine that uses no ovens! For reasons of fuell efficiency among others. So many of our western confections are baked! It's no wonder that Chinese desserts went in a totally different direction.

Secondly, we're talking about the world's most populous country where the majority of the people are lactose intolerant. It is a society with virtually no dairy products. No butter, no cream, not many traditions that make use of these or similar products either (even now).

We all go to our cupboards from time to time try to prepare a meal from whatever is available. Well, no ovens and no dairy products would virtually insure moving in a direction very different from our Western dessert sensibilities.

It is always fascinating to me to go into one of the many Chinese bakeries, where they emulate our Western desserts but do it from a Chinese sensibility/point of view. Some of the items seem almost ersatz, but then there are aspects of Chinese bakers trying to mimic Western desserts, where the Chinese really get it right, and maybe better. They sure are good at making very tender cakes and delicious pound cakes. And their version of "cheap' icing, the tastee cake level, is almost always an improvement over what we're used to on the low end.

PS: If you ever eating at Sweet & Tart @ 20 Mott, order their Malaysian Roll. It is a delicious eggy steamed cake that is done jellyroll style and it is delicious.

[foodgeek]

I like SE Asian desserts...although I don't think thats what FG is talking about.

FG...Do you like the desserts at Sripraphai? I'm curios. How about Malaysian peanut (or banana) pancakes?