Underestimated basic kitchen: How tapioca pearls score with neutrality, of all things

It's been a decade since a mug with bubble tea became a trendy accessory in Germany: heavily sweetened tea, often mixed with milk, with glassy tapioca pearls in it, which was loudly slurped up through a drinking straw.

Now teenage queues in front of narrow bubble tea bars announce the second wave of this drink, which originally came from Taiwan.

The special mouthfeel of the soft starch pearls made from cassava roots has played a major role in the success of bubble tea.

The fact that this doesn't appeal to everyone - some disgustedly refer to the globules as fish eyes or frog spawn - only seems to encourage ambitious cooks.

Tapioca pearls show their strengths not only in tea beverages, but also in dishes in starred restaurants.

They are a very versatile ingredient, because they are tasteless per se, which can be approached with a large portion of wit.

With lime marinade and fish

The exceptional Swiss chef Tanja Grandits, who is at the stove in the “Stucki” in Basel, is a big fan of tapioca. She flavored pearls boiled in lime leaf water with a lime marinade and combined them with balls of cucumber and avocado. Another grandits dish provides a mixture of tapioca, mustard seeds and elderflower as a side dish to crispy fish and mint tapioca together with raw sea bass cubes as a filling for cucumber lemur.

The Austrian cookbook author Margot Van Assche devotes an entire chapter in her work “Rose, Schwein und Feigenblatt” to tapioca pearls, processing them into a sausage with lovage, blinis with rose cream and a tortilla with hay salt - the starch balls replace them Potatoes. US chef legend Thomas Keller even has the starch globule as the protagonist of his

in his “French Laundry” restaurant in Napa Valley

A monument is set: In the dish “Oysters & Pearls”, tapioca pearls are combined in a creamy sauce with oysters and sturgeon caviar.

The obvious association with caviar is also used by other chefs: In the “Lido84”, an avant-garde restaurant directly on Lake Garda, Riccardo Camanini deceives his guests with two cams made of bright yellow balls: one is made of pure char caviar, the other one Tapioca pearls, cooked in reduced orange juice.

A culinary

'

.

Used in Europe as early as the 19th century

Contrary to what one might think, the globules are not a trendy ingredient in newer formats. Old cookbooks show that tapioca pearls or sago pearls (which are only allowed to be called that if they actually come from the sago palm) were handled in Central Europe as early as the 19th century. In her standard work “Die Süddeutsche Küche”, first published in 1858, Katharina Prato mentions sago as an ingredient for a soup and a sweet casserole. She also mentions an early instant product, "Knorrs Tapioca julienne", which may have been mixed with pieces of dried vegetables. The book “Instructions in the finer culinary arts” by Johann Rottenhöfer also dates from the middle of the 19th century, and in it encourages a generously sweetened sago soup with burgundy, cinnamon and orange peel.

Lina Morgenstern explains in detail about the different varieties in her “Illustrated Cookbook” in the 1920s: “The real one is the pulp of the sago palm, in uneven lumps or round grains. The American sago is made from the starch of the sweet potato plant. Portland sago is obtained from the roots of Arum maculatum in America and England. ”(The arum is considered a poisonous plant today.) And further:“ The German sago is made from the starch of the potato. ”So German sago! At Lina Morgenstern, this potato sago is boiled in milk and baked with plenty of butter, sugar, eight eggs and spices to make a luscious warm pudding.

When dealing with tapioca or sago, the same applies as for pasta: You have to boil the pearls, which are available in different sizes in Asian supermarkets or health food stores, in plenty of water or other liquid, without a lid.

It is also important to either water them beforehand or to rinse them properly with plenty of cold water afterwards so that the starch does not gelatinize everything - after all, the palate will want to be able to play with the individual balls later.

Tapioca pudding recipe

For a cold, tumble tapioca pudding for four people, calculate 150 grams of tapioca pearls and 1200 milliliters of liquid - for example a mixture of coconut milk, milk and water. This may seem like a lot of liquid, but it is part of the essence of starch pearls that they swell and greatly increase their volume. The cooking liquid can be slightly sweetened and flavored with spices such as saffron, vanilla or pandan leaves. In the latter case, be sure to add a good pinch of salt - this is how you beam your taste to East Asia. The globules, previously soaked in cold water for 20 minutes, are boiled in the flavored milk for around half an hour, at least until they are translucent. The resulting viscous mass is poured into bowls and placed in the refrigerator for at least an hour to solidify.Nobody should think of frog spawn with such a dessert.