Photo Courtesy of LJ *thanks!*
Tau Suan
Here is an all time favourite local dessert eaten by virtually anyone, and most people will tell you how difficult it is to cook this delicacy and that you would need to spend a lot of time cooking it etc. Well, half of what people tell you is true, all the other stories are mostly not true.
Let me show you how easy it is to cook this and if I can do it, you can also.
Fortunately for those that need a little more visuals, I found a really good video on YouTube that we can all follow. See Toh from Makansutra does it really well. You can follow his instructions and ingredient list if you like, or you can follow my no frills method.
I shop and got all my ingredients from the dry goods section at NTUC Supermarket.
Recipe
Ingredients
250 grams Mung Beans or Green Split Beans (don’t ask me why they are called Green when they are actually Yellow)
1 bunch of Pandan Leaves
Rock Sugar
Sweet Potato Flour
Method:
1. You may rinse the mung beans if you like. Most people do this until the water is clear. If you ask me why do people do that, I will tell you that it is totally unnecessary. Why make your life so difficult? Just dump the entire 250 grams into the pot and fill it up with 1.5 litres of water.
2. Wash and twist pandan leaves into two or three bunches. Dump the bundles into the pot of water with the mung beans. Boil until mung beans are jumpy and dancing in the pot. Sing twinkle twinkle little stars.
3. Walk twenty metres away from the pot and stay there. When you start to smell the pandan flavour from 20 metres away, chances are it is almost done. Walk back to the pot and remove the pandan leaves. By now the water should be a watery yellow in colour. You can take a few beads of mung beans and test them for softness. If the required texture is achieved which is basically softened mung beans, you can proceed to add the flour mixture.
4. This is when you mix your sweet potato flour in a bowl of cold water until it is a milky mixture. Slowly pour it into the boiling mung bean broth and stir until it thickens into a starchy mixture. If you have poured the entire bowl into the pot and it is still not starchy like the usual tau suan texture, then feel free to mix some more and continue to pour into the pot.
5. Once ready, add some You Tiao or fried dough fritters, and you can eat. If you’re looking for Halal dough fritters, Old Chang Kee sells them but only in the morning. And don’t forget to add the rock sugar! Add until it is just about starting to be sweet then stop.
Bon Appetit!