Taiwanese Dessert Time
Shaved ice. Red beans, green beans, peanuts, taro balls, tapioca balls, something called "grass jelly". All sorts of textures and sweets. This is not your traditional dessert unless you are East Asian. But as with many cultural foods from all around the world, it can be found in good old New York City!
I don't think this has every ingredient I listed above, but it's possible. What's visible here are these chewy balls made from sweet potato and taro that have the natural sweetness of the ingredient. It's on this black jelly that has an herbal taste to it, also slightly sweet. Below that, which is invisible here, is shaved ice with the texture of snow, and below that: red beans. Poured over the whole thing is a bit of cream.
This day was a particularly hot summer day, and this was the perfect way to cool down and appease my apparently sweet tooth. It's a sweet tooth alright, but it doesn't like things that are too sweet.
Where can you get it? At this place called Meet Fresh. It's apparently a chain with locations in the West coast as well, and I'm not sure where else. I think it's a rather unfortunate name because when you say it, it sounds like reversed fresh meat, and that's pretty far off the mark. Ah well.
If you click into the the Yelp link you can see all sorts of other tasty iced dessert variants. In the winter, or when it turns cold, you can also see there are hot variants of the same dishes, and those are also tasty and will warm you up in the cold days. Talk about versatile. The only other place I've seen that kind of does something similar is a gelato place that in the winter time offers hot chocolate in addition. It is actually just melted chocolate gelato basically, but I think it's also tasty!
I'm salivating as I write this actually... I think it's time to pay this place another visit!
That looks tasty!
I think I know the type of grass jelly you are referring to, it's a popular dessert ingredient here in Malaysia too, but I've never seen it prepared like this.
My wife is Vietnamese and she makes something like this, too. But in a cup. And with lots of squishy things that I can't remember with mung beans and ice, oh, and seaweed. It takes some getting used to, but eventually, I warm up to it.
Your treat there is otherwise unfamiliar to me and looks tasty. The Asians have some rather novel ideas about dessert. Thanks for presenting another one here.
Yeah it's definitely a completely different flavor and texture profile than Western desserts. Seaweed in dessert? Even that sounds a little strange to me hehe
I made a mistake in upvoting your post, and if I unvote it to change it, that will just go to waste. So I'm fixing it here -- which means you made out pretty well on this deal.
People get surprised in Venezuela when I tell them that in Asia, beans are usually part of desserts. Most of what I ate with beans in Japan were either delicacies or things like beans + yogurt. In here, they're made and eaten completely differently, so it's a cultural shock for either side when they meet the other.
Hmm yeah I don't think we eat savory beans come to think of it. But now I've seen it all haha.
What do you mean savory beans? And by "we", who do you mean?
We meaning Chinese/Taiwanese. Savory as in not in dessert context. Salted beans with rice, and such.
Oh alright! I guess I've never seen savory be used in that context. And we only eat beans like that! Salted and boiled with lots of seasonings like garlic, pepper and onions. We eat beans a lot but we only eat them like that, in either soup format or simply strained. In most cases, at least in my family, we put rice on them or next to them as you say.
Since you have so many bean desserts and we eat so many beans, I should look for some to make here and look all exotic. :D
If you had put that picture up and said “guess what this is” I never would have guessed dessert!
Looks more like coffee with marshmallow floaters ☕️.
Interesting dessert!
I'll drink that any day!
Your post reminds me of Indonesia. My wife always like Es Campur ("Mixed Ice") which looks similar to what you have shown.
I usually stay away from anything that has jellies in it, but I appreciate the reminder of great memories overseas.
Yeah I think that ice type desserts are very popular. There was a place I visited in Taiwan that really got the texture to be really powdery snow like and that texture was incredible.
Pay with bitcoin/litcoin/sbd ;)
Yeah I want to pay on SBD lol. I'll suggest it if I visit them a lot. It would have to be A LOT I guess.
You had me at dessert! Indeed those are ingredients typically found in Asian cuisine.
Because the Chinese were one of the first immigrants in the Philippines these ingredients are also a part of our heritage.
We have the oldest Chinatown in the world called Binondo.
Old secrets in that china town? Mmmm
That looks like a pretty good dessert. Send some this way. If it has sweet potato I'm in!
I prefer the taro. All good though. It's chewy.
Wow, this looks incredibly strange, and possibly quite tasty!! Never heard of this kind of dessert before!~
Definitely not your usual dessert if you never seen it ;)
Eon, I love you, man, but this looks disgusting.