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.
Boba tea. Taro starch balls at the bottom of the two in front. Taro root.
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.
Cold or hot is just one of the many choices.
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.
The greenish rectangles and and brownish tubes are two shapes made from starch. Sign indicating “ton sui” of various types and flavors.
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.
The tapioca “pearls” are the small pasta balls, and the large chunks are taro root, sweet potato, and other tubers.Deep fried taro root chips. Next to a delicious banh mi sandwich.
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?
In a nod to Chinese/Asian new year (February 10, 2024), this article is about a Chinatown. The largest Chinatown is in Flushing, Queens, New York.
A sign in the dim sum house.
We went to eat good Chinese food and we went to Flushing to find it. It is a mere Subway ride (take the 7 from Midtown — also, you can pay by credit card at the Subway turnstile! No need for a ticket.) and get off at the Flushing-Main Street stop. Just down the street to Roosevelt and Prince streets, you will feel and hear the Chinatown atmosphere. Actually, the minute we got above ground, we heard people talking loudly in Mandarin Chinese. The smells made us realize that we were near some dumplings.
After doing some research, we decided (also because it was all last minute) to make our own food tour. There is a new mall called Tangram at the modern fancy end and then “hole in the wall” types of places like the famous White Bear. We headed for White Bear. The dumplings were good but can be had at other places for equal quality. The sauce was not spicy. Also, I felt a bit sad for the staff as they did not seem happy to have gained such fame.
White Bear is only take away. Dumplings with spicy sauce from White Bear.
We were only there for a short while and only had so many stomachs to fill so we ONLY managed to eat at four places in as many hours. After White Bear, we headed to a dim sum place called Nan Xiang Xiao Long Bao (as seen in the first photo at the top of the article). This place had the legit dumplings included their famous soup dumplings (xiao long bao).
Bamboo steamers.Multicolor dumplings are a modern take.
Luckily we got there before noon (yes, we already had the dumplings above before noon) so we only had to wait a few minutes for a table. This restaurant offered warm fresh soy milk which is apparently an authentic thing to have for breakfast. Warm soy milk and a cruller (deep fried dough).
Warm fresh soy milk and crullers is breakfast.The famous soup dumplings.
The soup dumplings were excellent although a touch too big for the spoon so there was no room on the spoon for the soup that ran out of the dumplings when poked with a chop stick. In some places in the world, the soup dumpling is so big that it is served with a straw. This is a gimmick. It is an amateur move to try and put the whole dumpling in one’s mouth. This is steamed dumpling and if you bite into it whole, it will explode like a magma filled volcano. I poked my dumpling over a bowl and drank the soup from there. There is a soy and ginger sauce for the soup dumpling but I loved the dumpling as it was. Inside was a lovely pork meatball juicy with soup.
Even here at Nan Xiang, there was some concession to being in the US. There were colorful dumplings made to please the eye, vegetarian dumplings, the scallion pancake made too sweet, and the cucumber salad not smashed (apparently the way I like Chinese cucumber salad is too garlicky — which is not authentic).
Notice our order ticket taped to our table?
As we ordered dishes, our ticket was taped to our table. Once we stopped ordering and had paid, we were told, gently, to leave, as there were long lines of people waiting for our table. So we left. But then went on to have dessert soup. I wrote about that in my article about my spirit starch. After a walk around Tangram mall, we went and had Peking Duck at Jiang Nan. Read about that in my article about that. It had gold leaf on it.
We ended our self made food tour of Mandarin Chinatown Flushing and headed back to Midtown New York. I do not think we ate anymore that day.
Oh, I tell a lie. We had boba tea. Which is a meal in of itself. More on that in another article.
