Dazz Switalla Flavour Secrets No.1 The Strand Chef www.no1thestrand.co.nz

When I eat takeaways, which is not that often I hasten to add, I ever-increasingly find the local chip shop, or bakery, is often owned or run by Asians.

The shops are clean, have a lucky cat waving in attendance – and most importantly they're popular and have great value, tasty food.

A lot of hard work goes into the preparation of the Chinese-style buffet found in a lot of takeaway shops, which often have a large takeaway menu as well.

Out the back large woks are scraped and tossed around on gas burners and there's a steady banter of Mandarin – the whole family is involved, with younger members often taking or running orders.

There are also an increasing number of awards being won by studious Asian bakeries for their pies – and thankfully, more Asian supermarkets stocking all sorts of wonderful groceries.

The trouble is we often don't know a lot about what most of the products are, or how they can be used.

As Kiwis return from travel in Asia, they can revisit some of the flavours from their trip by visiting an Asian supermarket – and I guess that's why I love
to visit them.

To my surprise I found a new Asian supermarket right in town on Grey St.
On browsing I found some pandan leaves, green pearl sago and dark coconut sugar – just what's needed for this week's quick and tasty, gluten-free dessert.

Green tapioca and pandan with dark coconut syrup

Ingredients
Serves 4

200g dark coconut sugar
150g green tapioca pearl
4-6 pandan leaves
200ml coconut cream

Method

First make a syrup by adding one cup of water to the coconut sugar and ½ the pandan leaves tied into a knot. Simmer gently until it becomes a dark syrup. Keep this warm.

Next bring two cups of water to the boil with the rest of the pandan leaves, also knotted.

Simmer for five minutes, occasionally crushing and bruising the pandan leaves to extract the flavour.

Strain off the juice and put it into a clean pot. Bring the juice back to the boil, and in a steady stream gradually add tapioca.

Add a little of the coconut sugar to this and some water if it becomes too thick, as you cook it until most of the balls become translucent. This only takes about two minutes.
Then simply spoon the green pearls onto a plate and pour on some coconut cream, and lots of the coconut sugar syrup. Yum.