I was thinking of a dessert to make for an upcoming dinner. Thai Red Rubies (Tub Tim Grob) came to mind—the dessert of water chestnuts coated with tapioca flour, and served in coconut milk.
Mango season is in full-swing, right now, so it struck me, “How about ‘Yellow Garnets’! Mangoes instead of tapioca flour! It’ll be like mango sticky rice, with the tapioca flour replace the rice as the starch! And it comes with coconut milk as well!”
I imagined the surprise and delight of my guests’ first bite. I set to work on a test batch, camera at hand to document my genius:
Cube mango, and toss gently in tapioca flour...
...until evenly coated
Place in boiling water until they float; remove and dunk in ice water.
Glistening yellow garnets. Success!
I fished a cube out of the ice water and popped it into my mouth. It tasted like luscious mango… covered in snot.
One essential element had slipped my mind: the ‘grob’ in ‘tub tim grob.’ ‘Tub tim’ means “red ruby” in Thai, and ‘grob’ means “crunchy.” Leave out the crunchy part, and the mouthfeel is just slime on goop. It tasted fine, just that the texture combination was all wrong.
Well then, I guess I won’t be demonstrating this on Good Morning Singapore, after all.
But since I’d taken the photos, I thought I’d post this disaster anyway. If anyone knows a pickling method, or some other technique to put crunch in mangoes, please leave a comment! (Ferran Adria is in town right now. Someone point him to this page!)
Postscript: Went out and got coconut milk, made the cream, and finished all the “garnets.” It actually wasn’t that bad as a completed dish. At least Xander seemed to enjoy it too.
Saplings: The Pomelo Home Blog 