Ingredients: |
Ingredients: Look at the instructions on the package of tapioca that you buy. Some small pearl tapioca requires overnight soaking in water. If your package has that requirement, reduce the milk in the recipe to 2 1/2 cups from 3 cups.
Ingredients:
½ cup small pearl tapioca (you can usually find it in the baking section of the grocery store, do not use instant tapioca)
3 cups whole milk (or skim milk with cream added)
¼ teaspoon salt
2 eggs
½ cup of sugar
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
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Directions: |
Directions:1 Cook the tapioca in milk with salt, slowly adding sugar until the tapioca thickens: Combine tapioca, milk, and salt in 1 1/2 quart pan on medium high heat. Stir while bringing to a bare simmer. Lower the heat and cook uncovered, at the lowest possible heat, adding sugar gradually, until the tapioca pearls have plumped up and thickened. Depending on the type or brand of tapioca you are using and if you've pre-soaked the tapioca as some brands call for, this could take anywhere from 5 minutes to 45 minutes of cooking at a very low temperature.
2. Stir occasionally so that the tapioca doesn't stick to the bottom of the pan.
3 Temper the eggs with a little hot tapioca: Beat eggs in a separate bowl. Whisk in some of the hot tapioca very slowly to equalize the temperature of the two mixtures (to avoid curdling).
4. Return eggs to pan with tapioca. Increase the heat to medium and stir for several minutes until you get a thick pudding consistency. Do not let the mixture boil or the tapioca egg custard will curdle. Cool 15 minutes. Stir in vanilla. Serve either warm or chilled.
Note: If you want to make a more light and fluffy, but still rich, tapioca pudding, separate the eggs. Use the egg yolks to stir in first to the pan with the tapioca. Once the pudding has become nice and thick, beat the egg whites in a separate bowl to soft peaks. Remove the pan of tapioca pudding from the stove, fold in the beaten egg whites into the pudding. |
Personal
Notes: |
Personal
Notes: My mother always made tapioca as a dessert (why not chocolate cake??). Those little balls felt weird but I got used to it and don't mind it now. (Alice)
Ask most Americans if they eat any Manioc/Cassava/Yuca (Manihot esculenta) and the vast majority would say no. Tapioca is made from balls (pearls thus pearled) of starch extracted the from manioc root. Manioc/Cassava/Yuca is a staple crop in many parts of the Americas and Africa - the third-largest source of food carbohydrates in the tropics, after rice and maize providing a basic diet for over half a billion people. It is also known as the hunger crop in that it can be left in the ground for several years continuing to grow and then harvested when another staple crop fails. Manioc contains lethal amounts of Prussic Acid (Hydrogen cyanide - HCN) and must be processed to be edible. It is an example of the fact that agriculture mostly produces commodities that must be processed to become food. This was true also for the Hunter/Gathering that immediately preceded agriculture. "Processed food" is now a term of derision but the fact is that food processing has been an essential component of our food supply as long as we have been humans and even before for our immediate progenitors. (Thomas DeGregori)
Most of the world’s spices come from plants that originally grew wild in hot humid climates that are also conducive to the growth of micro-organisms. These plants evolved to produce toxic secondary metabolites – largely the bitter tasting glycoalkaloids and polyphenols - to defend themselves against these micro-organisms and as an active deterrent for browsing mammals. Currently most spices come from roughly the areas in Asia where they originated while chilies (chili from Nahuatl chīlli, Capsicum annuum - from the genus Capsicum, a member of the nightshade family, Solanaceae contains the toxin capsaicin) are grown in a variety of places but likely originated in Mesoamerica. While spices may have been used primarily to add flavor, their anti-microbial glycoalkaloid toxins helped to preserve and make food safer to eat. The polyphenols are said to have a wide variety of health benefits many of which have neither been clinically proved nor disproved. The human immune system can handle small amounts of the glycoalkaloids but they are harmful even deadly in larger concentrated doses
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