A decade ago, it was dusky green matcha. Then came masala chai, yuzu and ube. Now another distinct Asian ingredient is wending its way through New York City’s dining scene.Pandan is a staple ingredient in Southeast Asian cuisine, used to give beverages, desserts and savory dishes a simultaneous hit of sweetness and earthiness. The blade-like leaves, which grow at least two feet long, are believed to have come from the present-day Moluccas islands in East Indonesia. One of the first recorded reference to pandan was in 1832.A slew of well-known dishes feature the fragrant herb: gai hor bai toey, a Thai fried chicken dish; nasi lemak, a Malaysian favorite where the rice is cooked with coconut milk and pandan leaves; and banh bo nuong, a brightly green-hued honeycomb cake from Vietnam.“Without it, it’s pretty obvious. Your food loses a signature whiff and flavor,” says Sharon Wee, a New York-based Singaporean cookbook author. Pandan’s fresh taste, which is imbued by either simmering it with other ingredients or blending it to create an extract, cuts out the heaviness from the coconut milk, sugar and chicken fat that it’s often used with, she adds.Now pandan is popping up across the city, and not just at Southeast Asian bakeries such as Bánh by Lauren and Lady Wong. In May, Cronut creator Dominique Ansel featured a strawberry pandan filling for his signature treat to celebrate the famed pastry’s 11th birthday. Before that, he served pandan coconut chiffon cake and pandan... Continue reading at 'Crains New York'
[ Crains New York | 2024-08-30 10:03:04 UTC ]
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Publication Date: Thu, 17/03/2011 - 17:10 Novelist Bi Feiyu has won the 2010 Man Asian Literary Prize, becoming the prize's third Chinese winner in four years. He was awarded the US$30,000 award at an event in Hong Kong for his novel Three Sisters (Telegram/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt).The... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-03-17 00:00:00 UTC ]
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