http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/24/ma...l?ref=magazine

June 24, 2007

Recipe Redux:
1949: Strawberry Tapioca Flamingo

By AMANDA HESSER

"In 1951, 1.5 million pounds of tapioca spilled into the East River when a
pier holding a shipment from Brazil collapsed in the early morning hours.
(The headline in The Times: "Tapioca à la East River.")

It wasn't the first time that the flavorless pudding base - the powder or
granular "pearls" of dried cassava root - made headlines. Before World War
II, all of the tapioca that Americans consumed came from Java; once the
Japanese invaded the island, the supply was cut off. The Times's food
reporters treated lists of scarce wartime ingredients like those of
casualties and kept close tabs on the tapioca situation. In the meantime,
General Foods came up with a substitute made from sorghum, called Minute
Dessert, which The Times declared an acceptable but hardly flawless
substitute. To pudding makers across America, relief came at last in 1947,
when the United States began importing tapioca from Brazil. Thus the drama
on the pier.

Today, tapioca pudding usually means a creamy blend of tapioca pearls, milk,
sugar and vanilla. But before and after the war, one of the most enduring
ways to prepare tapioca was a blend of the pearls (cooked in water or fruit
juice) and fresh fruit, served with whipped cream. There are recipes for
this in The Times going back to 1876.

In 1949, the curiously named Strawberry Tapioca Flamingo appeared in the
paper. It built on the original recipe by making one layer with half of the
tapioca-and-fruit mixture and a second layer by combining the rest with
whipped cream. (If you've ever had Jell-O fluff, you'll understand how a
family of desserts can arise and then be corrupted.) It's a delicious
combination and pretty too, with bits of strawberry suspended in the clear
pink jelly and a poof of cream and jelly on top. It's so good that the
editors apparently couldn't resist running the same recipe again two years
later when there was a record strawberry harvest.

The Times recipe appears to have been "borrowed" (with minor improvements)
from one that appeared in a booklet put out by the Minute Tapioca Company in
1931. I learned this from the consumer historian Jan Whitaker on one of my
favorite sources, the Association for the Study of Food and Society's
Internet mailing list, where you can get personalized answers to questions
about anything from the culinary uses of breast milk (once a hot topic) to
the healing properties of rambutans. There was much speculation among the
experts on the site about the "flamingo" part of the recipe: since the
dessert is really from the 1930s, it would seem to have been a precursor to
the flamingo cocktails popular in the 1940s, as well as to the lawn flamingo
invented - as every schoolchild knows - in 1957.

I asked Michael Laiskonis, the executive pastry chef at Le Bernardin, to
give the Strawberry Tapioca Flamingo a modern interpretation. He had a lot
of ideas. The dessert reminded him of trifle, so he pondered turning it into
a more proper trifle, garnished with tapioca. He considered a vacherin
surrounded by a sauce of tapioca and coconut milk. Finally he settled on a
brightly flavored strawberry-and-basil soda, in which large tapioca pearls
bounce around the bottom of a tall glass while a ball of strawberry sorbet
hovers above them. His creation took the flamingo further into both the past
and the present. The quick-cooking tapioca used in the 1949 recipe was a
modernization of the long-cooking pearls. And the long-cooking pearls are
now back in vogue, most commonly as the foundation of bubble teas. Tapioca
may never have the following it did when it was scarce, but now it has
style.


1949: Strawberry Tapioca Flamingo

This recipe appeared in The Times in an article by Jane Nickerson.

Today, a looser concoction of tapioca is preferred, so if you want the
dessert lighter, add 1/4 cup more juice to the tapioca cooking liquid and
1/4 cup more cream to the topping. If you like a neater presentation, the
strawberries may be cut into small pieces rather than crushed.

1 pound strawberries, hulled

1 cup sugar

About 2 cups pineapple juice or water

1/3 cup quick-cooking tapioca

Scant 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

½ cup heavy cream, whipped.

1. Lightly crush the strawberries. Add the sugar and let stand at least 30
minutes.

2. Set a strainer over a bowl and drain the strawberries. Set them aside.
Add enough pineapple juice or water to the strawberry juice to make 3 cups
total.

3. In a saucepan, mix together the juice, tapioca and salt. Bring to a full
boil, stirring constantly, then remove from the heat. (The mixture will be
thin. Do not overcook.)

4. Fold the drained strawberries into the tapioca mixture. Cool, stirring
occasionally. The mixture will thicken as it cools.

5. When the tapioca mixture is cool, divide half among 4 coupe glasses.
Chill the glasses and the remaining tapioca mixture.

6. Fold the cream into the remaining tapioca mixture, then pile lightly into
the glasses. Serves 4.

---

2007: Strawberry Tapioca Soda

By Michael Laiskonis, executive pastry chef at Le Bernardin.

For the strawberry juice:

1 pound strawberries, hulled and coarsely chopped or mashed

5 large basil leaves, torn

1/3 cup sugar

Juice and grated zest of 1 lemon

Juice and grated zest of 1 orange

For the tapioca:

¼ cup large tapioca pearls

3 tablespoons sugar

To assemble:

1 10-ounce can club soda, chilled

Strawberries and basil leaves, for garnishing

Strawberry sorbet, or other sorbet or ice cream.

1. For the strawberry juice: Toss together all the ingredients in a large
bowl. Cover, place in a warm area and let stand for 4 hours, then chill in
the refrigerator for at least 2 hours.

2. Cook the tapioca: In a medium saucepan, bring 6 cups water to a boil.
Stir in the tapioca, reduce heat to a steady simmer and cook until there is
only a pinpoint of white in the center of each pearl, about 1 hour. Stir
occasionally to prevent the pearls from sticking to the bottom of the pan or
to each other.

3. Meanwhile, in a small saucepan, heat the sugar and 1/3 cup water until
the sugar has dissolved. Let cool. Drain the tapioca and rinse with cold
water. Stir into the cooled syrup and chill.

4. Strain the strawberry mixture through a fine-mesh sieve, pressing on the
solids to extract the maximum amount of juice. You should have about 1 1/3
cups.

5. To assemble: strain the tapioca from the syrup and divide it among

4 tall glasses. Add 1/3 cup strawberry juice to each glass. Divide the club
soda among the glasses and gently stir to combine. Top with a scoop of
sorbet and garnish with strawberries and basil leaves. Serve immediately,
with a large straw or long spoon. Serves 4. "

/

"Gregory Morrow" wrote in message
nk.net...

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/24/ma...l?ref=magazine

June 24, 2007

Recipe Redux:
1949: Strawberry Tapioca Flamingo

By AMANDA HESSER

"In 1951, 1.5 million pounds of tapioca spilled into the East River when a
pier holding a shipment from Brazil collapsed in the early morning hours.
(The headline in The Times: "Tapioca à la East River.")

It wasn't the first time that the flavorless pudding base - the powder or
granular "pearls" of dried cassava root - made headlines. Before World War
II, all of the tapioca that Americans consumed came from Java; once the
Japanese invaded the island, the supply was cut off. The Times's food
reporters treated lists of scarce wartime ingredients like those of
casualties and kept close tabs on the tapioca situation. In the meantime,
General Foods came up with a substitute made from sorghum, called Minute
Dessert, which The Times declared an acceptable but hardly flawless
substitute. To pudding makers across America, relief came at last in 1947,
when the United States began importing tapioca from Brazil. Thus the drama
on the pier.

Today, tapioca pudding usually means a creamy blend of tapioca pearls,
milk,
sugar and vanilla. But before and after the war, one of the most enduring
ways to prepare tapioca was a blend of the pearls (cooked in water or
fruit
juice) and fresh fruit, served with whipped cream. There are recipes for
this in The Times going back to 1876.

In 1949, the curiously named Strawberry Tapioca Flamingo appeared in the
paper. It built on the original recipe by making one layer with half of
the
tapioca-and-fruit mixture and a second layer by combining the rest with
whipped cream. (If you've ever had Jell-O fluff, you'll understand how a
family of desserts can arise and then be corrupted.) It's a delicious
combination and pretty too, with bits of strawberry suspended in the clear
pink jelly and a poof of cream and jelly on top. It's so good that the
editors apparently couldn't resist running the same recipe again two years
later when there was a record strawberry harvest.

The Times recipe appears to have been "borrowed" (with minor improvements)
from one that appeared in a booklet put out by the Minute Tapioca Company
in
1931. I learned this from the consumer historian Jan Whitaker on one of my
favorite sources, the Association for the Study of Food and Society's
Internet mailing list, where you can get personalized answers to questions
about anything from the culinary uses of breast milk (once a hot topic) to
the healing properties of rambutans. There was much speculation among the
experts on the site about the "flamingo" part of the recipe: since the
dessert is really from the 1930s, it would seem to have been a precursor
to
the flamingo cocktails popular in the 1940s, as well as to the lawn
flamingo
invented - as every schoolchild knows - in 1957.

I asked Michael Laiskonis, the executive pastry chef at Le Bernardin, to
give the Strawberry Tapioca Flamingo a modern interpretation. He had a lot
of ideas. The dessert reminded him of trifle, so he pondered turning it
into
a more proper trifle, garnished with tapioca. He considered a vacherin
surrounded by a sauce of tapioca and coconut milk. Finally he settled on a
brightly flavored strawberry-and-basil soda, in which large tapioca pearls
bounce around the bottom of a tall glass while a ball of strawberry sorbet
hovers above them. His creation took the flamingo further into both the
past
and the present. The quick-cooking tapioca used in the 1949 recipe was a
modernization of the long-cooking pearls. And the long-cooking pearls are
now back in vogue, most commonly as the foundation of bubble teas. Tapioca
may never have the following it did when it was scarce, but now it has
style.


1949: Strawberry Tapioca Flamingo

This recipe appeared in The Times in an article by Jane Nickerson.

Today, a looser concoction of tapioca is preferred, so if you want the
dessert lighter, add 1/4 cup more juice to the tapioca cooking liquid and
1/4 cup more cream to the topping. If you like a neater presentation, the
strawberries may be cut into small pieces rather than crushed.

1 pound strawberries, hulled

1 cup sugar

About 2 cups pineapple juice or water

1/3 cup quick-cooking tapioca

Scant 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

½ cup heavy cream, whipped.

1. Lightly crush the strawberries. Add the sugar and let stand at least 30
minutes.

2. Set a strainer over a bowl and drain the strawberries. Set them aside.
Add enough pineapple juice or water to the strawberry juice to make 3 cups
total.

3. In a saucepan, mix together the juice, tapioca and salt. Bring to a
full
boil, stirring constantly, then remove from the heat. (The mixture will be
thin. Do not overcook.)

4. Fold the drained strawberries into the tapioca mixture. Cool, stirring
occasionally. The mixture will thicken as it cools.

5. When the tapioca mixture is cool, divide half among 4 coupe glasses.
Chill the glasses and the remaining tapioca mixture.

6. Fold the cream into the remaining tapioca mixture, then pile lightly
into
the glasses. Serves 4.

---

2007: Strawberry Tapioca Soda

By Michael Laiskonis, executive pastry chef at Le Bernardin.

For the strawberry juice:

1 pound strawberries, hulled and coarsely chopped or mashed

5 large basil leaves, torn

1/3 cup sugar

Juice and grated zest of 1 lemon

Juice and grated zest of 1 orange

For the tapioca:

¼ cup large tapioca pearls

3 tablespoons sugar

To assemble:

1 10-ounce can club soda, chilled

Strawberries and basil leaves, for garnishing

Strawberry sorbet, or other sorbet or ice cream.

1. For the strawberry juice: Toss together all the ingredients in a large
bowl. Cover, place in a warm area and let stand for 4 hours, then chill in
the refrigerator for at least 2 hours.

2. Cook the tapioca: In a medium saucepan, bring 6 cups water to a boil.
Stir in the tapioca, reduce heat to a steady simmer and cook until there
is
only a pinpoint of white in the center of each pearl, about 1 hour. Stir
occasionally to prevent the pearls from sticking to the bottom of the pan
or
to each other.

3. Meanwhile, in a small saucepan, heat the sugar and 1/3 cup water until
the sugar has dissolved. Let cool. Drain the tapioca and rinse with cold
water. Stir into the cooled syrup and chill.

4. Strain the strawberry mixture through a fine-mesh sieve, pressing on
the
solids to extract the maximum amount of juice. You should have about 1 1/3
cups.

5. To assemble: strain the tapioca from the syrup and divide it among

4 tall glasses. Add 1/3 cup strawberry juice to each glass. Divide the
club
soda among the glasses and gently stir to combine. Top with a scoop of
sorbet and garnish with strawberries and basil leaves. Serve immediately,
with a large straw or long spoon. Serves 4. "
===============
I know I would love that Strawberry Tapioca Pudding. I have made it a lot
in the past and my mother made it also, and we always had the strawberries
on top with whipped cream, but this is a little different. I am going to
try that one.



/