Saturday 14 July 2007

Melon Bubble Tea Melon Bubble Tea

A real treat is sitting at a worn formica table in Jen Café on Newport Place, in London's Chinatown listening to the clatter of mahjong tiles and muffled shouts in Cantonese wafting in from the windows above the street, a bubble tea in front of me slowly sweating beads of condensation and sharing a plate of vegetable jiaozi freshly made by the woman sitting in the window. The really accomplished trick is to pick up a dumpling with chopsticks, dunk it in the soy-vinegar dipping sauce and transport it to your mouth without ripping the skin of the dumpling and emptying its contents down your front. I just love how the big gloopy, amoeboid, tapioca bubble tea pearls shoot up the oversized straw and eddy around your tonsils before you can manoeuvre them into position to be chewed and swallowed. And then, how they seem to reconstitute themselves and gloop down your oesophagus much like gobs of chewing gum hastily gulped down the hatch to avoid school detention; only you can swallow these without fear or regret, confident in the knowledge that they won't wrap around your ribcage and form a sticky web entangling your innards.

Ingredients:

  • Half a small watermelon, juiced
  • Half a cantaloupe melon, juiced
  • A cup of green tea
  • Unsweetened soya milk
  • Honey
  • Black tea flavoured bubble tea pearls

Mix the cup of green tea with the cantaloupe melon juice. Sweeten with honey. This layer goes at the bottom of the glass so it is good to sweeten this as much as possible without completely overpowering the cantaloupe melon flavour. This acts as counterpoint to the more fresh, slightly vegetable tasting watermelon juice. Spoon the cantaloupe juice mix to quarter fill a couple of glasses. Put the glasses into the freezer until the juice freezes solid (approximately 2 hours).

Divide the watermelon juice between two bowls. Add a couple of splashes of soya milk to one of the bowls. Add the soya milk carefully as you don't want to overpower the watermelon flavour. Sweeten to taste with honey. Place the watermelon / soya milk mix in the refrigerator to chill, place the unadulterated watermelon juice in the freezer.

After two hours prepare the bubble tea pearls following the instructions on the packet. Strain them from the boiling water in the saucepan and run them under cold water to cool them down to room temperature. Take the glasses containing the frozen cantaloupe mix and the bowl containing the unadulterated watermelon juice out of the freezer. Crush up the frozen watermelon juice with a fork and spoon a layer to each glass. Add a heaped spoonful of bubble tea pearls into each glass. Take the watermelon / soya milk mix and fill the glasses to the top. Pop in an oversized bubble tea straw and enjoy.

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