Chilled red bean dessert soup

In the mood to consider something different?  It's time for another Asian dessert, this one using red azuki beans.

An Asian dessert soup of red beans and tapioca pearls, served cold

Dessert soups are very common in Chinese culture.  I've talked about a few in the past - from a sweet potato one, to taro-tapioca, glutinous rice balls, and my husband's favorite, mango sago.  This red bean dessert soup is a very common one, often served at the end of a meal in a Chinese restaurant or as a dessert in a Chinese banquet (for say, a wedding).  After seeing a recipe for it on a blog recently, I realized I'd never made it at home so why not give it a try!

There are just a few ingredients in this red bean dessert soup.  The main one is the red azuki beans.  Red beans are very popular in Chinese and Japanese food - whether as a sweet paste stuffed in buns or pancakes, or as a filling in cake, or in the form of popsicles or ice cream, to name a few uses.   

Red azuki beans used for this dessert soup

One of my favorite food memories growing up, in my early days in Hong Kong, was of eating little red bean pudding cakes that were served on a stick.  I really love all things red bean but I don't get to enjoy them nearly as much as I wish so I'm making up for things a bit today by whipping up a batch of this red bean dessert soup.

Besides the beans, all you need is water, sugar to sweeten, and, if you feel like it, a few tablespoons of tapioca pearls to thicken things up a little further and give it a fun extra texture.  This soup is often flavored with tangerine peel (or you could use a little orange zest, as I've seen suggested).  I opted to omit this because in all cases where I've had red bean dessert soup flavored with tangerine peel, the flavor has always been too strong for me.  I never knew what it was for the longest time but I knew I didn't like it all that much.

As for the cooking process, the beans should be soaked for a few hours and there will be about 1 1/2 - 2 hours of cooking time on the stove.  I know stovetop cooking isn't the most appealing thing in the summer but I tried to make up for it by cooking this and chilling the soup to serve cold.  While this is typically served hot/warm, you can usually enjoy most Chinese dessert soups either hot or cold.  I am extreme - I like things either really hot or really cold!  The benefit, to me, of chilling the soup is it thickens up rather substantially (it's almost pudding like) and personally, I like a thick hearty texture.  If that's not your preference and you prefer a more fluid "soup", serving it at room temperature would be a better option.

Vietnamese corn, coconut, and tapioca dessert soup (Che Bap)

I'm circling back to corn.  As I mentioned, seeing and tasting the amazing fresh corn available right now had me thinking about different ways of cooking with it.  One of the things that popped into my head was the memory of a Vietnamese cooking show I'd seen where the host was scraping corn and using the corn milk to make some kind of sweet dessert soup (I don't remember what it was exactly).  That got me searching for Vietnamese dessert soups featuring corn and I ended up here with a delicious one, called "Che Bap" ("che" refers to a sweet dessert soup or pudding, and "bap" means corn).  

A chilled dessert soup, made with fresh corn kernels, light coconut milk, tapioca pearls, and topped with toasted sesame seeds

Dessert soups are very common and beloved in Asian culture - both hot and cold.  Once in a while, you might find an Asian dessert house that serves only that.  I love nearly all varieties of these soups and I can now add this one to the list!   

So this isn't the recipe I vaguely recall from the cooking program but I'm happy that it inspired this discovery.  This Vietnamese corn pudding, or dessert soup, features fresh corn kernels as well as coconut milk and small tapioca pearls.  When I hear there's coconut milk involved in a dessert soup, I'm fairly confident it's going to be good.  In fact, coconut milk and tapioca pearls make a great base for many kinds of dessert soups.

I used light coconut milk in this recipe.  It may sound silly but I'm quite proud of that because I did it despite seeing recipes that specifically said not to.  I'm a very reluctant rule-breaker, you see!  I used Trader Joe's light coconut milk, which I really like and have had a lot of success cooking with.  It's not as thick and rich as regular coconut milk but it's still so flavorful and fragrant.  And get this: you're consuming 70% less fat and 65% less calories by using the light version!  I didn't miss the extra fat at all, and you're not sacrificing flavor or texture.  In fact, you don't feel weighed down after eating this.

I had some tapioca starch on standby in case I needed to thicken the soup with a slurry.  I decided I didn't need it and I'm glad I held back.  The soup is relatively thin when it's hot off the stove but this kind of soup made with coconut milk and tapioca pearls thickens pretty significantly after it's been refrigerated.  While you can certainly enjoy this hot or warm (both good), I prefer it cold in this instance.  It is summer, after all.  

After it's chilled, the soup is thick but not so thick that you need to dilute it with water (what you'd likely need to do if you went with the full-fat coconut milk...so you see, the light version actually works better!).  I wasn't sure I'd like the toasted sesame seeds suggested as a topping for this che bap but I did.  It adds a nice nuttiness to the sweet soup.  And this is indeed a lovely dessert soup, mostly sweetened by the fresh corn kernels.  The natural sweetness from the fresh corn was seriously intense!

Sweet potato dessert soup

Happy Chinese New Year!

With the holiday in mind, I thought this was an opportune time to post another entry under Chinese dessert "soups."  There are many varieties of Asian dessert soups (called "tong shui") and this is probably the easiest one I know how to make. 

I'll tell you something.  As a kid, I always associated Chinese New Year with obligatory visits to distant, far-flung relatives.  It was like we had a hit-list that needed to be checked off before we could breath a sigh of relief, slump back on the couch, and say, "we're done!"  It's not really like that for me now.  It's been simplified; we focus on our near and dear, and have yet another excuse to get together and...eat!  There are family meals (I should say, feasts) with tons of savory foods and sweets lying around to usher in a sweet New Year.  My mother has this covered flower-shaped candy holder with compartments in it that she'd take out during the New Year to fill with candies and edible seeds (yes, like red melon seeds to symbolize good things like growth and life).  Along with boxes of chocolates we'd give and receive as gifts during the New Year, that candy holder was the part I looked forward to most as a child and I always lobbied (successfully) for more chocolates in the box.

But back to dessert soups.  There are so many, including the kind with little round glutinous rice balls swimming in their sweet soup for Chinese New Year.  I wish I knew how to make more of them since I can think of a dozen right off the top of my head that I've enjoyed.  My sister used to take us to Chinese dessert houses to have them.  I have her to thank for teaching me how to make the taro tapioca dessert soup that I love and my husband is forever grateful I learned to make his favorite, mango sago dessert, this past summer (we'll be making plenty of that cold treat throughout the summer).  But this sweet potato dessert soup is seriously easy to put together; I don't even remember being taught how to make it.  It takes just four ingredients (including the water!) and cooks up in less than half an hour.  It's sweet but balanced by some spice from fresh ginger. 

In the wintertime, this hot soup takes part in my comfort food lineup, without the need for a special holiday to enjoy them.  My favorite part is the soup itself and I like plenty of ginger to give it some pep.  I wish I could get the little one more interested in these Asian desserts but thus far, he is far more into things with frosting.  I convinced him to have a bit of this since he likes sweet potatoes.  He complied and ate some but wasn't exactly chomping for more.  I'm hoping he'll come around to appreciate these types of things when he's older. 

Mango sago dessert

This cold mango sago dessert is another example of Asian dessert "soup".  If you like mangos like I do, this is a great, refreshing summertime dessert. 

I wanted to learn how to make this for my husband, who loves this dessert very much.  Eating this takes us right back to road trips to Toronto, Canada.  We went there just last summer with my sister and her family and together, we visited landmarks and children-friendly places like the zoo but most importantly, we consumed an enormous amount of delicious Chinese food.  There is a strong Chinese/Asian population in Toronto and going there feels a bit like visiting Hong Kong.  The food is so good there!

And on our trip to Toronto, after we'd had a day of sightseeing with the kids and eaten a huge dinner, we would also visit a Chinese dessert house, where there'd be a variety of these dessert soups (hot and cold) and other desserts like ices and puddings to choose from.  My husband adores this mango sago dessert.  He'd get this look of rapture on his face and after we're done and the bill has been paid, we're thinking about when we can go back again.  It takes us right back to a trip to Hong Kong we took when we first graduated from college.  We went with our fellow foodies (i.e., my sister and brother in law - no kids at the time) and it turned out to be an amazing food trip.  We ate non-stop and there were dessert houses featuring these kinds of fresh fruit desserts in almost every corner.  We ate there as often as we could.  We went to Japan and Hong Kong on that memorable trip; I swear I gained ten pounds in less than two weeks.

So I've been wanting to make this for a while.  Not only is it delicious but it also brings back good memories.  I was a little worried about how this would turn out.  In Hong Kong and Toronto, they seem to have the most amazing tasting mangoes all year round and I didn't even know where I'd find one of the ingredients - plain mango juice - around here.  Needless to say, I finally got it together and it came out terrific.  Might not be quite as tasty as the ones from the dessert houses we visited but it's a mighty good homemade version.  Happily, it was also quite easy to make once I got the ingredients together. 

Taro tapioca dessert

I'm taking dessert on a different tangent today.  If you're familiar with the Chinese food culture, you'll know about the many varieties of sweet  dessert "soups".  They're called "tong shui" in Cantonese, which literally translates to "sugar water."  I love these sweet soups and there are many kinds.  I love to eat them hot during the cold months but they are usually amazing chilled and served cold...great for the summertime.  

Chilled Taro Tapioca Dessert

One of my favorites is taro tapioca dessert.  Taro is a root vegetable, with a mild flavor.  It's like potato or sweet potato and its mild flavor lends really well to this dessert where it can absorb and sort of balance the sweetness, I think.  Its starchiness also helps thicken the "soup".  And tapioca pearls are just plain fun.  Admittedly, they have very little flavor but the texture of the soft little bubbles floating around in your dessert soup is rather addicting.

I've had varieties of this dessert (Malaysian restaurants, for example, serve it with a few additional ingredients and it's very common to add some cubed sweet potatoes/yams as well) but this recipe comes from my sister, who has made this for us for years now.  Whenever I'm visiting her, I dropped hints about her very delicious "sugar water" that I love so much and I am often rewarded with a sweet surprise.  Not to mention, I usually get some extra to take home and store in the fridge. 

Somewhere along the lines, my sister learned how to make this dessert and unlike me, who generally needs and prefers to work from a written recipe, she has always made this from her head so there are no actual proportions to follow.  It's the kind of recipe you have to feel your way through and get to know.

I wanted to learn to make this because I love it and my husband does too.  And I think my husband would enjoy a little change from all the cakes and cookies I put in front of him!  This was my second attempt at making this dessert and I thought I'd try my best to pin down some semblance of a recipe this time.  That way, I can refer back to it here when I want to make it again and hopefully, it will make things easier.  I had many questions and phone calls back-and-forth with my sister and this time, my dessert came out a lot closer to how it should be!  The first time I made it, I put way too much water in it and it was just too watery.  I still prefer to eat this at my sister's house though.  Somehow it tastes sweeter when someone else makes it for you.  * hint, hint *