Local delicacies
Cendol
Sarawak's answer to the afternoon heat.
The syrup is what people are actually tasting, and it should be thick and dark rather than thin and sweet. The jelly can be bought ready-made without much loss — the syrup cannot.
- Serves
- 4
- Time
- 45 minutes
Ingredients
Syrup
- 250 g coconut sugar block, chopped
- 100 ml water
- 1 pandan leaf, knotted
Cendol jelly
- 80 g green pea flour
- 20 g rice flour
- 500 ml pandan juice, from blended and strained pandan leaves
- A pinch of salt
To serve
- 300 ml coconut milk
- A pinch of salt
- Shaved or finely crushed ice
Method
- Cook the chopped block, water and pandan leaf over a low heat until dissolved, then cool. Aim for a syrup that coats a spoon.
- Whisk both flours into the pandan juice with the salt, then cook over a medium heat, stirring constantly, until it thickens into a stiff, glossy paste.
- Push the hot paste through a cendol press — or a colander with large holes — held over a bowl of iced water. The strands set as they fall.
- Drain the strands once they are firm.
- Stir the salt into the coconut milk.
- Build each glass with jelly, then ice, then coconut milk, and pour the syrup over last so it runs down through the ice.
Salt in the coconut milk is not optional — without it the whole glass reads as flat sugar.
