Wednesday 10 February 2016

Upcycled Letterboxes, Tapioca Coconut Pudding

We've been collecting photos of the ingenious letterboxes that New Zealanders create from upcycled materials. So here are a few more....





These letterbox owners were all neighbours - I think they must have been in competition.

Tapioca Coconut Pudding
While we were in Auckland recently, we popped into Rangoon Poon Restaurant for a dessert. Their sago pudding was so good that I had to try to recreate it when I got home.



The first thing is - it was misnamed, it wasn't actually sago, but tapioca that they had used. Their dessert had a palm sugar syrup on it, but it's really great with fresh fruit too.
What I love is that I can recreate this at home, and it's very easy, for probably three or four dollars for 5-6 servings, instead of the $13 that we paid for one.

1 cup of dry tapioca (or sago works well too)
2 cups of water
1&1/2 cans of coconut milk (that's about 600mls)
2 Tablespoons of palm sugar or sweetener of your choice

Rinse the tapioca and discard anything that floats up.
Soak the tapioca in the water for an hour or longer.
Drain in a sieve.
Place the tapioca in a large bowl and add the coconut milk (ratio should be 2:1 milk to tapioca)
Cover and microwave for 5 - 10 minutes (I find 6 minutes enough)
Stir and add sweetener.
Check that your tapioca is cooked through - it should be soft with no hard bits.
Spoon into small glasses and refrigerate for an hour or two before serving.

Yes, that's right, only 5+ minutes of cooking in there. Delicious tropical coconut creaminess.  How easy is that?!



5 comments:

  1. Ha! I love the letterboxes!!
    In regional Australia, it's common to see 10-20 letterboxes all lined up on the main road, for locals who obviously live nearby, it makes life easier for the postie. It's a beautiful sight.
    I've never tasted tapioca/sago, it looks yummy!
    I gasp in horror at the price of desserts in cafe's and restaurants these days, I went out for lunch recently for my birthday, and they were asking $17 for dessert!!! I declined! Better for the waist AND the wallet!

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    1. Tapioca is a pudding we had when I was a child, but it was never this nice, well worth a try. I couldn't pay $17 for a dessert either. Mostly these days Derek and I go halves for a dessert so it doesn't seem so bad for waist and wallet

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  3. My goodness, desserts are not that expensive here. I would say $5 at a pretty nice restaurant and even less elsewhere. The last dessert I had was a chocolate rum cake with cream and we split
    it 3 ways, $5. Anyway, your recreation looks lovely. What are the little brownish things on top of the berries?
    Love the mailboxes! Ours all must be standard boxes as prescribed by the federal government, but people do put different things on the posts.

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    1. The things on top of the strawberries are passionfruit - yum. I have just converted that $13 NZ to $US and it would be $8.71. It is definitely more expensive to eat out here - but we don't have to add any extra for tipping - it's just not done here.

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