I still love you, white rice. And you too, waxy potato. But, I think that sago may be my spirit starch. I like it in two forms — as bubble tea and sago soup.
Bubble tea (read Wikipedia’s article here to learn more) was invented in Taiwan. It started out as a drink with tea and tapioca (cassava) round pasta which looked like bubbles. Nowadays you can get it without tea or bubbles. With or without milk (soy, almond, cow, etc.), hot or cold, with varying levels of sweetness. I am not sure why anyone thinks that the tea is making this healthy.
The other form of spirit starch that I love, even more than bubble tea, is a coconut milk soup with sago pearls and warm tubers. I was not really sure what this is called when I had it for the first time at a Lao/Thai restaurant. But I was in love at first sight. And committed at first slurp.
Apparently in Cantonese, a dessert pudding/porridge is called “tong sui” as you can see in the photo above. But, the soup that I love is “sai mai lou” or sago soup.
So what is sago? It’s a starch (almost 100 percent starch) derived from the sago plant.
This reminds of a thing I read about sago, another start. I recall reading in some tale of adventure about how the white explorer was not allowed to eat sago because according to the natives, the white man’s spirit was in the sago tree — and if he ate it, it would be cannibalism.
The reality is that I like comfort food. What is more comforting than carbohydrates and milk?