Since I couldn’t get my hands on any lotus seeds, I was happy to find lotus roots instead. These were sold at the Asian market.

In Chinese medicine, lotus root is believed to improve appetite. Lotus roots is rich in iron, vitamins B and C.

I’ve always loved eating water lotus roots prepared as desserts. Usually mixed with black beans and coconut milk.

To prepare them all you have to do is wash it well. Scrape or peel off the skin. In this case, I just scraped it off with a knife. When sliced, the little air holes make for an interesting pattern. Reminds me of honeycomb cereal.

Once it’s sliced, you want to prevent them from turning brown. Just soak the slices in water with a bit of vinegar or lemon juice.

You can eat them raw as healthy snacks. The texture of lotus root reminds me of water chestnut. They are crunchy, but a bit bland. Tossing them into a salad would be a good idea.

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Ice cream may be popular in the U.S., but around the world shaved ice is what they prefer to stay cool.

Asian shaved ice is not the same as American snow cones. Besides sweet syrup it also has other toppings including fresh fruits and some are even flavored with tea.

This is a jar of halo-halo which is made of tropical fruits and syrup. I found it to be too sweet. But I guess it’s meant as topping to shaved ice and other ingredients too.

You can find this jar at most Asian grocery stores for $1.50. Product of the Philippines.

Here’s a partial list of shaved ice around the globe:

Hawaiian shave ice
Japan Kakigori
Filipino halo halo
Mexican raspados
Korean bingsu
Taiwanese bao bing
Indian golas and chuskis

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Since I was in the mood for agar agar dessert, I was happy to find some frozen pandan leaves at the Asian market for about $1.  It would be nice to find some fresh ones, but they can only grow in tropical climates. The package was from Vietnam and read, “Bay Thoy Leaf”.

Nicely washed and cut pandan leaf. Photo from hsa*ba, Burmese cooking.

Pandan leaves have a very interesting scent.  I can’t really describe, a bit herbal floral. And somewhat of a ripe banana too.  But other have described as being rose like. Not only does it offer a fragrant scent, but it could be used as food coloring too. Some even use it to wrap their food for cooking.  I just want to use them to make agar agar dessert.

I am starting to enjoy agar agar more then gelatin.  Gelatin is a bit boring and it’s derived from the collagen inside animals’ skin and bones. Bad for vegetarians, but good for those that don’t mind animal collagen. Agar agar is derived from seaweed and has trace minerals and more.

I found some neat inspiration for making desserts using agar agar from Appon’s: Recipe from my native Thailand. Appon made this dessert with mashed pumpkin and pandan flavor agar agar. Since I am a fan of pumpkin pie, I think this would taste great. Photo from Appon.

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