Saturday night walking market on Wua Lai road provides an opportunity to sample even more food, with a helpful English sign here and there.
These caught my eye, looking like a pile of something between fairy floss and scoops of ice cream, before I spotted their explanation. "It looks, feels, and tastes like a bready flour cake, but it's not. It's made from steamed palm hearts.....
The orangy cake is apparently naturally coloured and flavoured, and originates from a heart of a Toddy Palm (ต้นตาล - Sugar Palm - Borassus flabellifer). I thought this was one of the most environmentally unfriendly desserts I'd ever eaten, because a palm tree will die if its heart is removed. So I told myself they were slaughtered for another good cause and the hearts would have just gone to waste...or, that they were harvested from farmed palms.
Websites call them (ขนมลูกตาล - kha nohm luuk dtaan) a 'sweet made from the jelly like seeds of a sugar palm' or 'Palm Heart Puffs'. So the heart isn't really the heart! I watched a fella at a Brunei market extracting these jelly seeds and it seemed very labour intensive for a very small morsel return.
They are bready, a bit rubbery, not too sweet and topped with shredded coconut. I think there may be a little rice flour in them also, judging by the recipes online. The pastel varieties seem to be flavoured with rose water or similar?
A thumbs up! I'd go back for more.
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2 comments:
Gee whiz mate! those palm heart puffs sound promising, wonder how they would go squashed flat and fried with a lot of crispy bacon and a couple of eggs. Crikey my mouth is watering already. Maybe you could crank Otto up?..Ok off to brekky now, have my trakky on....18.5 @ 6am under the outside roof, o/nite drizzle and the tanks are trickling over.....Al-Pal @ 291
Probably better with hot custard :)
The weather's warmed up in the last few days, here...not hot inside though and the humidity is low, which is always a blessing. Personally I hope the cold (coolish)snap returns.
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