Grass Jelly With Brown Sugar Shaved Ice, Sweet Potato Balls & Yam Balls (鮮芋仙招牌)
Dessert @ Meet Fresh [鮮芋仙] (www.meetfresh.com.tw/pro_01.php), a Taiwanese chain that has landed in Shanghai, offering Taiwanese style iced desserts.
I had this for 20RMB, which is actually quite expensive by Shanghainese standards but there is no point in denying myself certain "carnal" pleasures.
Grass Jelly or Herbal Jelly [仙草] is a southern Chinese dessert/drink, brewed and gelantised from the herb Mesona chinensis, which has also found its way south into Southeast Asia via early Chinese immigrants from Guangdong Province. The Taiwanese alleviates this simple and humble dessert into a new culinary art form, pairing it up with various items such as red beans, green beans, or in this case, yam and sweet potato flavoured glutinous balls to create delightful desserts. They can be served both hot and cold but I always prefer mine served cold.
The slurpiness of the wobbly jelly (which is sweet but had a mild herbal medicinal taste) provided stark and interesting contrast to the gluey chewiness of the unsweetened glutinous balls. The juxtaposition of textures is actually another one of the main selling point of the dessert.
Grass Jelly With Brown Sugar Shaved Ice, Sweet Potato Balls & Yam Balls (鮮芋仙招牌)
Dessert @ Meet Fresh [鮮芋仙] (www.meetfresh.com.tw/pro_01.php), a Taiwanese chain that has landed in Shanghai, offering Taiwanese style iced desserts.
I had this for 20RMB, which is actually quite expensive by Shanghainese standards but there is no point in denying myself certain "carnal" pleasures.
Grass Jelly or Herbal Jelly [仙草] is a southern Chinese dessert/drink, brewed and gelantised from the herb Mesona chinensis, which has also found its way south into Southeast Asia via early Chinese immigrants from Guangdong Province. The Taiwanese alleviates this simple and humble dessert into a new culinary art form, pairing it up with various items such as red beans, green beans, or in this case, yam and sweet potato flavoured glutinous balls to create delightful desserts. They can be served both hot and cold but I always prefer mine served cold.
The slurpiness of the wobbly jelly (which is sweet but had a mild herbal medicinal taste) provided stark and interesting contrast to the gluey chewiness of the unsweetened glutinous balls. The juxtaposition of textures is actually another one of the main selling point of the dessert.