flawsinmoderation asked: so, I was interested in your beginning with this blog. Then I started looking through your archive and I found these 'tapioca pearls'. What is that? It looks amazing, so softy and yet crunchy and sweet. Could you please show us the recipe for them? I'm your fan, by the way. It's wonderful to see how you can manage your time to cook and study medicine which must be so hard. How far are you from graduating?

You know I always get a little antsy when people say they’ve been backtracking me that I once considered removing my old posts, but thought that it’d be amusing to once in a while look at the junk I wrote a few years back.

Anyways, the tapioca pearls (or sago):

They’re actually not crunchy nor sweet at all. Its made from a starch extracted from the cassava root. The starch is then processed to several forms: it can come as a powder, fine or coarse flakes or meal, rectangular sticks, and spherical “pearls”. Unflavoured, processed pearls come in different sizes and 3 different colours: white, green and red. The green ones actually have to go through a process of detoxification since it contains a toxin that causes paralysis. Some pearls are further processed to give them distinct flavors - like the “Boba” used in bubble tea - those have been flavored with brown sugar and has a distinct black colour.

I’ve only done two recipes using tapioca pearls so far, and that’s the Watermelon Bubble Tea and Mango-Sago Pudding. Here’s the method to prevent the pearls from clumping while cooking, should anyone wish to try it.

Thank you :) It’s manageable for now. Lucky for me sleep is pretty much a secondary need. There was some kerfuffle but now we’re actually all set to take our physician’s oath which I still have to memorize. And no, it does not begin with “First, do no harm” on the 1st of March and to start our clinical rounds on the 5th, so I’m trying to cram (both food blog & studying) as much as I can until then.