Cooking idea

[yesthattom]

As some of you know, I like to make gelatin dessert from scratch (i.e. Jello without using the Jello-brand packets) and that I usually make, well, lemon jello.

Today I went to Dim Sum with Alan, sigje, mycroft, and figmo. Since it is Chinese New Years they had a lot of special items that Occidentals would not normally order, and we tried to get some. One was this black mass of goo that tasted, well, quite odd until we realized it was basically "tea jello" with some kind of sweet sauce.

So now I'm wondering if I could make tea jello or green tea jello and/or if they would taste any good.

Comments

Should work

[mrfantasy.livejournal.com]

Unless there's something about the tannins that would prevent the gelatin from setting.

If only you knew someone who was a chemist.

Re: Should work

[inflectionpoint.livejournal.com]

Ha. Among other things, I am a chemist.

Yay!

[inflectionpoint.livejournal.com]

Should work just fine.

I think that the grass jelly that is sometimes served in Asian desserts is just a jello like thing made with green herbs and such.

We must take you to 99 Ranch, the home of amazing and varied Asian food, both ready made and also grocery type. That would be a place to ask and get expert advice.

Also it is near the restaraunt where you can have red bean soup for dessert. Red bean rocks my world.

[yesthattom.livejournal.com]

I should say that the jello was black... BLACK... making it look scary and bad. But we got it anyway. Then we had a difficult time identifying the taste. In fact, "tea" is still just a guess :-)

[inflectionpoint.livejournal.com]

That sounds rather scary. I'm seeing something like Little Shop Of Horrors here. Eeek!

One of the things I like about going to a place like 99 ranch is I can ask questions that might be strange in other settings... Are those chips with shrimp or with some vegetable thing? Is there pork in the whatever? And how was that made? Did you use this vegetable or that one? How was it thickened? Where does the ajinomoto flavor come from? Could I do that at home with bla, bla, and bla, or should I just buy it, because it is too complicated, or too complicated for this ignorant Westerner?

I love the red bean pastries, both the drier versions and also mochi, but don't read any of the languages in which they are labelled. I ended up taking the label from one wrapper and pasting it into my notebook so I could find the same thing again.

I also love the different flavor notes that show up in some Asian foods. I never would have imagined something as wonderful or diverse as miso, if I had not had it. There's just no analog in Western food that I've ever found. The red bean, black bean, green bean sweets are similar for me, as are some of the mushrooms.

Yay for food adventures!

[yesthattom.livejournal.com]

Ok! When do you want to take me?

[dariens-haircut.livejournal.com]

I don't know about the chemistry involved, but foodwise, it should work. After all, green tea ice cream is great stuff. So is red bean. Maybe you should make a red bean gelatin dessert.

Of course, considering how black the stuff was, not merely dark brown, maybe it was octopus ink flavored. Other cultures' cuisines tend to be a bit more open-minded than ours. But, then, if it were to catch on in our culture (weirder things have), you know we'd cheap out and use RIT or something.