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Recipes with tapioca pearls

3 recipes that use tapioca pearls, with photos, step-by-step instructions and cook times. The quickest, Chek k'tis, takes 30 minutes. It is most often cooked with sugar, coconut cream and cinnamon stick.

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Suafa'i

Suafa'i is a comforting Samoan sweet soup of ripe bananas and tapioca pearls cooked in water and finished with coconut cream, sometimes perfumed with lemon leaf. It is served for breakfast or as a warm dessert in Samoan homes in Apia and Auckland, especially for children and for anyone feeling unwell. A common mistake is adding the tapioca to cold water, which makes it clump; drop it into boiling water and stir. Chef's tip: use very ripe bananas so you need little or no sugar.

35 minPacific IslanderDessertsVeganGluten free
by KrazyBadal 0 views

Chek k'tis

Ask for something sweet at a Phnom Penh dessert cart on a rainy-season afternoon and you may be handed a warm cup of chek k'tis: chunks of small, tart-sweet bananas bobbing in coconut milk with clear, chewy tapioca pearls. The coconut milk is sweetened with palm sugar and seasoned with a good pinch of salt, which makes it taste rich rather than cloying, and a knot of pandan gives it a grassy vanilla scent. It is also cooked at home as an offering-day treat and eaten warm or at room temperature. The usual error is using very ripe, spotty bananas, which melt into grey sludge; firm, just-yellow fruit holds its shape and blushes pink as it cooks. Chef's tip: let the coconut milk only shiver, never boil hard, or it splits and turns oily.

30 minCambodianDessertsVeganGluten free
by KrazyBadal 0 views

Sagu de vinho

Glossy, wine-dark and wobbling with little translucent pearls, sagu is the dessert of the serra gaúcha, the Italian-settled wine country around Caxias do Sul and Bento Gonçalves, where it ends Sunday lunch at family tables and galeteria buffets. Tapioca pearls are cooked until clear, then simmered in red wine with sugar, cloves and cinnamon so they soak up the colour and spice. Locally it comes with a spoon of vanilla custard on top. The dish contains red wine, and simmering does not remove all the alcohol; for an alcohol-free version, use red grape juice and cut the sugar by half. Choose a vegan wine if that matters to you, as some are fined with egg or fish products. The common mistake is adding the wine before the pearls are clear, which leaves white chalky centres. Chef's tip: rinse the cooked pearls under cold water before they go into the wine, so the starch washes off and the dessert stays glossy.

50 minBrazilianDessertsVeganGluten free
by KrazyBadal 0 views

Goes well with tapioca pearls