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TRANSCRIPT
Highlights from the Culinary Institute of America’s 2007 Worlds of Flavor Conference
rising
plateCreative chefs. Better menus. Real solutions
ASIA
SPECIAL INTERACTIVE ISSUE WITH RECIPES LINKED TO OUR DATABASE
2007 Worlds ofFlavor Conference
At first, the idea of encompassing allof Asia in a three-day conference wasoverwhelming. After all, Asia is theworld’s largest continent, comprising37 countries and almost 4 billion peo-ple. But just as Europe and Americadominated the world for centuries,Asia has fully emerged as a world lead-er in matters governmental, economicand yes, culinary. It’s time to take acloser look, and the Culinary Instituteof America’s 2007 Worlds of Flavorconference, Rise of Asia, offered acomprehensive point of view of thisgroup of cultures. Our knowledge ofAsia has grown tremendously sinceour first tastes of stir-fried vegetablesand ramen noodles. And as intimidat-ing as the continent’s size and diversi-ty can be, there are common denomi-nators that link many of these cul-tures. Their love of street foods andthe elaborate offerings of Vietnamesepho, Indian tandoor-baked breads andThai papaya salads defy the idea thatall street foods come in a bun. Noodlesalso tie many of these cultures togeth-er, whether made from wheat, rice ormung beans, and steamed, fried orsimmered. Rice in varieties both long-grain and sticky fills bellies from Tokyoto Hyderabad, while condiments likechile paste and fish sauce perk uppalates throughout Asia with recipesFollowing is Plate’s special report onthe 2007 conference. Take a few min-utes to enjoy your own culinary tourof Asia with recipes linked to ourdatabase. As always, we’d like to thankthe staff of the Culinary Institute ofAmerica’s Greystone Campus for theirassistance with recipes and othermaterials, and Terrence McCarthy forhis beautiful photography.
Chandra Ram, editor
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
Street eatsSome of Asia’s favorite dishes come from dining à la cart“In Asia, street foods dominate the food scene,” said vivacious Singapore foodcritic and Asian food guide author K.F. Seetoh, who went onto explain thatwhile some of Asia’s delicacies originated on street carts, the peddlers them-selves were once considered taboo.
“People had disdain for street food vendors; they were a notch above prostitutesand murderers,” he said. The comical host may have poked fun at the stereotype ofthe old-fashioned street vendor, but confirmed that today’s street hawkers’ rollingkitchens are strictly regulated, with their own stall, electricity, exhaust, garbage andsewage systems, set up to serve fantastic eats from morning until night.
One vendor, third-generation street hawker Zulkifli Bin Packeer Bawa, came allthe way from Singapore to share his recipe for roti prata, a soft Indian corn crêpehe’s been perfecting for 30 years. “Zul is going to fry the roti prata, stretch thedough and let it breath a little before lovingly pan-frying them so they get reallycrispy on the outside and super-soft on the inside,” said Seetoh as the street chefdisplayed the manual flipping of each thin crepe. “I flip 2,000 roti a day,” said Bawaof the crêpes that cost about $1.50 each. “You can eat it with a bowl of curry orchicken for lunch or pair with minced eggs and sausage to make it a breakfastdish,” added Seetoh. “People add cheese or vanilla essence for a dessert.”
Another crêpe demonstrated during a special street food seminar was the lacypancakes, or roti jala, from the Grand Hyatt Singapore’s executive chef BrianCleere. The simple batter used to make these thin pancakes is put through a finestrainer and onto a griddle as lacey strands, giving the crêpes their airy, soft tex-
LEFT TO RIGHT: Conference Co-Host
Chef Suvir Saran perfects his roti on
a cast-iron griddle; Conference
Co-Host Chef Mai Pham checks the
temperature on Vietnamese pho.
ture. “You can flavor the batter,” said Cleere of the simple egg, milk, salt and wheatflour mixture, “you can make it savory or flavor it with a vanilla essence.”
Rohit Singh, chef-owner of Breads of India in Berkeley, Calif., also showed off hisfamous street bread dough, with a demonstration of Indian naan, which he says iscommonly associated with the northwest frontier areas of India. A large stone tan-door oven was set up on the patio during lunch, and conference-goers quickly linedup to try hand-tossed and slapped breads baked fresh on the inside of the oven.The golden brown naan was lightly brushed with butter. “Naan is offered as a streetfood in some parts of North India, like Delhi, and a few cities in the frontier state ofPunjab, where you can see small four-wheel carts carrying small tandoors sellingnaan with pre-cooked vegetarian curries like chhole (garbanzo beans) or tandoorikebabs,” said Singh.
“Naans are found mostly in medium to upscale restaurants to accompany lavishcurries and tandoori kebabs,” he says. “When people find naans made in front oftheir eyes and at the fraction of what they will be paying in the restaurants for it,they become an instant hit.”
There are sweet and savory elements in the spicy papaya salad, or som-tum, aThai street food staple presented by chefs Kobkaew Naipinij and BansaniNawisamphan, and known as Thailand’s national salad. “This dish is chopped andsliced right in the streets of Bangkok,” said Seetoh. “When making it, you need tobruise, not smash the papaya.” Seetoh also suggests serving the dish with stickyrice and skewered barbecue pork or grilled chicken for a lunch snack. “The dish isspicy and uplifting, it really wakes up your palate,” he said.
Another common street food that wakes up morning palates is Lemon GrassRestaurant Chef-Owner Mai Pham’s Vietnamese rice soup with chicken pho ga. Phamsuggests using a whole chicken to make the broth, and recommends garnishes ofscallions, cilantro, bean sprouts, fresh herbs, chiles and squeezes of lime, just asthey are offered on the streets of Vietnam.
Cleere uses chicken in another street food delicacy eaten for lunch or dinner, aclassic chicken curry cooked in a hot pot of onion, garlic, chili paste, clove, car-damom, curry powder and later tamarind water, salt, and coconut milk. “This dishshows a passion for the freshness of herbs and spices,” said Seetoh, which he saidhe believes is true of all authentic Asian street foods.
LEFT TO RIGHT: Roti prata, Chef Zulkifli
Bin Packeer Bawa, Tekka Market,
Singapore; Chef-Instructor Gopal Kochak
of The Holmes College Australia
demonstrates the art of tandoor.
MENU SPOTLIGHT
edible artStunning carvings, colors and optical illusions setAsian dishes a cut above the rest“This should be in the Smithsonian!” exclaimed master chef, author and TV hostMartin Yan after Chinese chefs Yue Liang Fu, Wen Ying Jin and Ming Hou Shanskillfully transformed sliced pressed pork belly into an intricate, multi-layeredpyramid resting on baby bok choy and a chestnut pancake and stuffed with drybamboo shoots. Yan also described the dish, a braised sliced pork with bambooshoots as rich, juicy, succulent and moist, but the finished product, made from asingle piece of pork belly, looked almost too artful to eat.
“All of the imperial banquet dishes from China, Thailand, Singapore, Vietnam andJapan are made with masterful skill,” said Yan as he introduced another elaboratedish demonstrated by the same three chefs, a crispy Mandarin fish with sweet and soursauce. “In Imperial cuisine, there’s a lot of focus on presentation,” he continued.“These dishes have to have stunning elements of color contrast, appearance, aroma,taste, and texture. But you hardly see them in a typical restaurant because there’s nodemand and very high labor costs.”
The chefs cut whole Mandarin fish cut into a pine cone shape and topped it with acolorful and textural mélange of green peas, pine nuts, and sweet and sour sauce.Wok-fried shrimp adorned the outside the fish and the head and tail were kept on thefish and positioned to make it look like it was swimming on the plate.
“The Chinese believe in wholeness and completeness,” explained Yan. “They servethe whole fish, rather than throw any part of it away. It’s good luck and good fortune.
LEFT TO RIGHT: Duck treasure in nest, Executive
Chef Chun Shuan Cai, Da Dong Roast Duck
Restaurant, Beijing, China; Master Chef Martin
Yan demonstrates the intricate cutting of crispy
Mandarin fish with Executive Sous Chef Yue Liang
Fu of the Hyatt Regency Hangzhou.
It’s like love; it has to be complete devotion.”“These beautiful cuts and presentations are to make you think, to tell you a story
and entertain visually before you eat,” added presenter Nicole Mones, author of sev-eral novels, including “The Last Chinese Chef,” (Houghton Mifflin, 2007).
When chefs from the Royal Thai cooking school in Bangkok presented a dish, theychose one that was fit for a king, literally. Demonstrated by mother-daughter duoNing and Kobkaew Naipinij, the impressive kao kwan was originally given to KingRama as a gift 100 years ago from his daughter.
“The king was sick,” explained Ning. “The princess thought about things liketamarind paste, rice and fish to help bring back his appetite.” Also described as an“offering to the Gods,” kao kwan literally means rice and sauce, and is rice, coconutmilk and tamarind paste presented in a bowl adorned with leaves folded in a triangu-lar shape and garnished with egg, dried fish, and shredded beef. “Thai food is forhealth, flavor, cultural heritage and the eyes,” added Ning.
Another dish that dazzled conference-goers was Chef Wei Guo Qiu’s cabbage-likedumplings. The trick-of-the-eye starch dumplings were stuffed with cabbage, pork andshrimp, but also made to look like small green and white cabbages.
“In China you could have a dumpling banquet, with 108 different dumplings shapedlike cabbage, rabbits, ducks,” said Yan. It came from Northwestern China, where theyeat a lot of noodles and dumplings.”
It’s not dumplings, but fried, shredded potato that takes the shape of a delicatebird’s nest in the duck treasure in nest presented by Chun Shuan Cai and Xian HouSun of Beijing’s Da Dong Roast Duck Restaurant. Each potato nest is filled with a col-orful mix of fried minced duck meat, fried pine nuts, boiled green peas and cubedwater chestnuts, that was both delicious and attractive to the eye. “TraditionalChinese food like this isn’t just about filling your belly,” commented demonstrationmoderator Fuchsia Dunlop.
“This is a different level of sophistication, education, culinary tradition derivedfrom 5,000 years of practice,” added Yan of the impressive dishes. “People don’t real-ize the effort, skill, love, passion and patience put into each plate.”
CLOCKWISE LEFT TO RIGHT: Crispy Mandarin fish
with sweet and sour sauce, Executive Sous
Chef Yue Liang Fu, Hyatt Regency Hangzhou,
China; Cabbage-like dumplings, Chef Wei Guo Qiu,
White Swan Hotel, Guangzhou, China;
Braised sliced pork served with bamboo shoots,
Chefs Yue Liang Fu, Wen Ying Jin and Ming Hou
Shan, Hyatt Regency Hangzhou, China.
ON THE SIDE
noodlingaroundNoodles made from wheat, rice and mung bean tie everything together“How long does it take someone to learn this?” conference presenter FuchsiaDunlop asked Xu Liu, as the young noodle chef from Beijing’s Made in Chinarestaurant pulled, twirled, twisted, and folded a long wad of thick dough in ahypnotic fashion, until it finally threaded down to what seemed like thousands ofperfectly thin noodles. The art of pulling the lan zhou noodles, Liu told the capti-vated audience, can take about a year to perfect. The dough is simple—mostlyflour, salt and water—but the technique is complicated, as a very skilled chefmust knead, twist and cut the dough nearly 50 times before it separates into per-fectly thin, noodle strands. The finished product looked delicious enough to eatplain, but Liu dressed his noodles up with a soybean paste for Beijing noodleswith soybean paste. The paste is a mix of pork, leek, ginger, garlic, wine, soysauce, sugar, and chicken powder.
The demonstration was a conference highlight, but other noodles—from glass tosoba—took center stage throughout the conference. In a kitchen demonstration byKorean chef Hee Sook Cho, stir-fried glass noodles were mixed with vegetables, mush-rooms, beef and soy sauce in traditional japchae. The noodles were made with sweetpotato starch and then mixed in a colorful mélange of vegetables.
“It’s like a noodle salad with protein and crunchy vegetables,” said Host Chef MaiPham of Sacramento’s Lemon Grass Restaurant, of the dish served best at room tem-perature. For CIA Chef-Instructor Shirley Cheng’s chengdu noodles, she boiled sobanoodles before sprinkling them with vegetable oil and then topping them with morethan 10 Sichuan spices and ingredients like garlic, rice vinegar, brown sugar and soy
LEFT TO RIGHT: Beijing noodles with
soybean paste, Chef Qiang Jin, Made in
China at the Grand Hyatt Beijing, China;
Chef-Owner Masaharu Morimoto of Morimoto
in New York City slices “noodles” from
daikon radish for his daikon “fettuccine”
with tomato basil sauce.
sauce. “It’s simple, like a street food,” Cheng said.When it comes to traditional pad thai, Chef Chai Siriyarn of Marnee Thai restau-
rants in San Francisco is a true master. The chef, who won the Los Angeles pad thaifestival contest in 2000, explained that the secret to authentic pad thai is using ricestick noodles that don’t end up too greasy or sticky.
“This is an important dish to show how Thai cooks balance flavors in one dish,” hesaid of the recipe, which combines tamarind, shrimp, garlic and palm sugar with ricenoodle sticks that have been soaked in warm water for 15 minutes. In the chef’s spicy crabmeat noodles, he uses fresh rice stick noodles for a spicier version withDungeness crab meat and Thai bird chiles or jalapeños.
The noodles in Chef Masaharu Morimoto’s daikon “fettuccine” with tomato basilsauce weren’t greasy, gooey, or the least bit starchy, because they were made fromdaikon radish thinly sliced into fettuccine-sized ribbons. The trompe l’oeil noodles,which he tossed in a tomato sauce, are, in the chef’s words,“preferable to slurp.”
Charles Phan from San Francisco’s The Slanted Door demonstrated his mother’sstir-fry glass noodles with crab. He combined Dungeness crab and glass noodles ormung bean thread with garlic, scallions, fish sauce, oyster sauce and cilantro.
“The dish must be served right away,” said Phan. “It only has a shelf life of about aminute and a half.” He also explained the importance of a wok when trying to preparethis dish, not only for its intense heat (about 200,000 BTU), but for the way it bringsout aromatics of the dish. “The breath of the wok is very important,” he explained.
TOP TO BOTTOM: Japchae, Chef Hee Sook Cho, The Woosong Culinary Academy, Seoul, Korea; Daikon “fettuc-
cine” with tomato basil sauce, Chef Masaharu Morimoto, Morimoto, New York City; Chef Xu Liu of the Grand
Hyatt Beijing’s Made in China demonstrates the intricate art of lan zhou hand noodles as conference pre-
senter Fuchsia Dunlop looks on and translates.
GREAT TASTES
Puckered-up
palatesAsian cooks welcome tangy, salty, spicy and bitterflavors alone and combinedYou only have to have breakfast in Asia to know that the flavors are different.Whether it’s Japanese rice topped with dried sardines, spicy curried vegetableswith tangy yogurt and fermented rice cakes in India, or a dose of fish sauce atopa Thai breakfast soup, it’s clear that America’s love of sweets doesn’t translateto most Asian dishes.
“In general, the Chinese eat fewer sweet foods than Westerners,” commented con-ference presenter and Chinese cookbook author Fuchsia Dunlop. “It depends on theregion, and also on when you are eating. Eastern Chinese people love sweet tastes(many dishes are sweet-savory); while in Hunan they like hot, salty, and sour tastes.Cantonese people tend to prefer simple, natural tastes, while the Sichuanese adoremulti-layered flavors, where you might find, for example, hot, sweet, numbing, saltyand sour tastes combined in a single dish,” she explains.
The Chinese art of balancing flavors is echoed in Japan, as in Chef MasaharuMorimoto’s sugared salmon with white soy sorbet and yuzu foam. Morimoto balancedthe sweetness of the sugared salmon with sour yuzu and umami-laden white soy inthis dish.
“Flavor balance is so important in Japan,” noted Japanese cookbook author and
LEFT TO RIGHT: Sugared salmon with white soy
sorbet and yuzu foam, Chef Masaharu Morimoto,
Morimoto, New York City; Badam Thandai,
Chef Abhijit Saha, The Park Bangalore, India.
conference presenter Elizabeth Andoh. “Sometimes people will talk about Japanesefood being bland in comparison to other Asian foods. The balance is more importantin Japan, rather that than tasting just spicy or sweet flavors.”
Spicy and sweet was just the combination Malaysian chef Alexander Ong, of SanFrancisco’s Betelnut restaurant, wanted to achieve with his dish of roast pork withchile raisin oil and Thai basil sauce.
“The basil sauce has fish sauce and Thai basil, so it has fresh and sour flavors, andthe chilies and raisins bring together spicy and sweet flavors,” noted Ong about thecombination.
Adding sweet flavors to savory ingredients is the philosophy behind Indian chefAbhijit Saha’s almond and coconut chutney. Saha handles the potential for too muchsweetness by adding sour tamarind pulp and Thai green chiles to the chutney.
“The coconut and almonds both have a sweetness, which is nice with the heatfrom the chile and the sourness of the tamarind,” noted Saha about the condiment,which can be served with any variety of meat and vegetable dishes. More on thesweet side but still tempered by savory ingredients is his badam thandai, a dessertwith almonds, cinnamon, and sugar spiced with peppercorns, saffron and cardamomto cut the sweetness and make the result more interesting to those who follow theAsian style of balancing flavors.
“The flavor combinations belong to an entire region, not just to one country,” saidcookbook author and presenter Naomi Duguid. “They are a characteristic of theregion’s shared palate.”
Roast pork with chile raisin oil and
Thai basil sauce, Chef Alexander Ong,
Betelnut, San Francisco.
24/7
Rice as niceAsia’s staple grain feeds the spirit morning, noon and nightIf there were ever any question about the importance of rice in Asian cooking,look no further than Japan, where the grain dominates almost every meal.
“Rice is critically important in Japanese cooking,” noted conference presenterElizabeth Andoh, an expert on Japanese cooking, author and founder of A Taste ofCulture, a culinary arts center in Tokyo. “The word for cooked rice is the word for ameal, so linguistically, you haven’t eaten until you’ve had rice.”
Andoh went on to note that traditionally, rice could be served at all meals,although modern Japanese do not eat it three times a day. She said a day could beginwith okayu, a rice porridge seasoned with sour uméboshi plums and other aromatics,like the chile-raisin oil that adds both sweet and spicy notes to the rice jook preparedby Koji Murakami, the executive chef at Sanraku in San Francisco. Lunch on the gocan comprise rice sandwiches called omusubi, an offering whose popularity shelikens to that of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, with rice formed around fillingsin the shape of triangles, golf balls or small logs. Dinner brings sushi or rice dishes ina bowl, perhaps topped with an omelet or boiled with aromatics like ginger and miso.
If the Japanese sound like they are living on rice, they are not alone; just aboutevery other Asian culture counts rice among its staples. Chinese cookbook authorFuchsia Dunlop noted, “Rice is the staple grain in southern China, and is eaten atalmost every meal, usually in the form of steamed rice, congee, or rice noodles.”Steamed rice served with vegetables or meat is a common offering throughout Asia,
LEFT TO RIGHT: Lamb biriyani, Chef Nimmy
Paul, Kerala, India; Palappam,
Chef Nimmy Paul, Kerala, India.
in dishes such as jeonju bibimbap prepared by Korean chef Myung Sook Lee, theexecutive director of the Culinary Institute of California, and Kerala, India-based foodwriter and chef Nimmy Paul’s lamb biriyani. Lee tops the rice and vegetables in herbibimbap with a fried egg, similar to those found atop Japanese rice bowls, whilePaul’s biriyani bears some visual and flavor resemblance to other Southeast Asianrice dishes, such as Chinese stir-fries and Thai curries.
“This kind of sharing came hundreds of years ago, when the Chinese went toThailand and shared their stir-frying techniques,” commented Chef Chai Siriyarn ofSan Francisco’s Marnee Thai.
Just as prevalent in Asian cooking is rice flour, which is milled and used for pan-cakes and wrappers in every region where rice is a staple. South Indians commonlybreakfast on soft rice cakes, such as the idiyappam prepared by Paul, or the thin,lacey palappam she suggests offering with braised meats or vegetables at breakfastor lunch, or with coconut cream and sugar for dessert. Siriyarn uses a differentcoconut and rice flour combination for his Thai mochi, which he prepared with co-presenter Kannika Siriyarn. Host Chef Mai Pham of Sacramento’s Lemon GrassRestaurant took rice flour to more savory territory with her Vietnamese rice rollswith shrimp, thin rice crêpes wrapped around shrimp and wood ear mushrooms.Presenter Chef Charles Pham, of San Francisco’s Slanted Door, similarly created adaikon rice cake, made by combining rice flour and cornstarch with vegetables tocreate a cake that is steamed and then browned in a pan before it is drizzled withchili soy sauce.
“They have a delicate texture, but so much flavor,” Pham said of the dishes.“Rice allows you to create unlimited dishes.”
LEFT TO RIGHT: Rice rolls with shrimp and
wood ear mushrooms, Chef Mai Pham,
Lemon Grass Restaurant, Sacramento, Calif;
Chef-Owner Chai Siriyarn of San
Francisco’s Marnee Thai demonstrates the
art of stir-frying a rice dish.
PERFECT PAIRINGS
Paired to a teaUse the mineral, tannic and umami flavors inJapanese tea to perfect your pairingsMention the art of pairing food and beverages, and most people in the industrycan rattle off at least a few favorite wine, beer, and cocktail pairings. But when itcomes to pairing Japanese tea with food, many culinarians are at a loss. TheBritish are known the world over for their teas—sometimes grand affairs withpristinely cut delicate sandwiches, scones dripping with jam and clotted cream,and assorted pastries. But Japanese green tea, replete with umami flavors andtannins, requires more savory pairings.
Japanese green teas, known as ocha, range from those that are mild enough to beserved instead of water, and those that are full-flavored enough to be served alone,as an aperitif or digestif. All varieties boast some level of umami, the Japanese savorytaste found in ingredients from soy sauce to mushrooms.
When approaching tea pairings, conference presenter Karen MacNeil, author of“The Wine Bible” (Workman Publishing, 2001), suggested starting with any foods thatpair well with Sauvignon Blanc.
“You want to show the delicate flavors of the tea,” she said, “and let those flavorsenhance the food you are eating.”
MacNeil led seminar participants through a tasting of sencha, tencha, and gyokurogreen teas. Gyokuro teas are of very high quality, using the youngest buds from thehighest-quality tea bushes. Sencha are the most popular teas made from the first newleaves, and tencha is very rare, brewed cold for up to 15 hours and boasting anhours-long finish. At the session, sencha was paired with fatty salmon and avocadoon a garlic chip to balance its clean flavors, while the tannins in gyokuro werematched with prosciutto.
Japanese chefs have begun to use tea as an ingredient, noted conference presenterand tea master Ryozou Taniguchi, of the Fukujuen tea shop in Kyoto. To illustratethat point, and make a play on traditional Western tea sandwiches, Kiyomi Mikuni,Chef-Owner of Tokyo’s Hôtel de Mikuni, prepared what he called sushi sandwiches, inwhich he layered salmon, capers, onions, wasabi, and tea frita on sesame bread, for aseemingly simple sandwich full of sharp and gentle umami flavors.
“It’s important that chefs have an open mind and a recognition that any experienceneeds to be revisited, again and again, to understand the breadth and depth of what’sthere beneath the surface in Japanese cuisine,” said Conference presenter andJapanese cookbook author Elizabeth Andoh.
Some Japanese green teas are mild enough
to be served instead of water, while others
are bold and well-balanced enough to be
offered as an aperitif or digestif.
GRAND FINALE
fruit iceAsia isn’t known for its pastries and desserts, and for good reason. After eatingspicy, tangy, flavorful food, sometimes in strong heat and humidity, the last thingyou want or need is a gooey chocolate cake or thick cream.
But a sweet tooth will prevail, and the urge for a bite of something sweet isanswered in Singapore by flavored shaved ice, sometimes known as ice kachang.Flavor additions vary from sweet fruit syrups, condensed milk, red and mung beans,canned corn and fruit jellies on the sweeter side to the less-cloying tea with melonsand lychees in the chrysanthemum shaved ice created by Singaporean cookbookauthor and conference presenter Violet Oon.
“This is not a traditional dish; rather, it is inspired by the summer ices of China,”she said. “In the past, in winter, great blocks of ice were cut and then stored in cavesin the mountains so that the ice would not melt throughout the fiery hot summermonths. Royalty and the elite used to enjoy shaved ice desserts with fresh fruits ontop to chill them.”
Shaved ice is a popular offering at Singapore’s many street stands and markets, aswell as those vendors in other Southeast Asian countries, including Japan, Malaysia,Korea, and Taiwan. The syrups, fruit and other toppings answer the cry for some-thing sweet after a meal, and the ice tempers the richness and keeps the dessertlight.
“One of the most beloved of dried flower teas in Singapore is the chrysanthemum,treasured for its cooling properties to counter the intense heat of the summer sun,”she said about the dessert, which is similar to a granita. “So chrysanthemum ice is anode to a traditional Singapore dessert.”
LEFT TO RIGHT: Cookbook author and conference
presenter Violet Oon; Chrysanthemum
shaved ice, Violet Oon, Singapore.
