It all started with a mad craving for taufufa in the middle of the night. As it’s impossible to find someone selling it at those hours, I decided to make it myself. Not taufufa, but something similar – milk pudding. A search on Google yielded so many results but I finally settled on a recipe that called for eggs, milk, sugar and ginger. Easy peasy, so I thought.
I had got sugar; but no milk, eggs and ginger. So I scurried off to the nearest 7-11 and thankfully found milk and eggs but still no ginger. The bf came up with the brilliant idea of asking the neighbourhood food stall for some. I was hesitant because it’s an odd request but my cravings were intense so I put on my bravest face and asked the proprietor. He gave me a bunch of them and even refused payment. The world has nice people :)
So I got home and immediately started cooking. As I discovered, making ginger juice is difficult! As I don’t have a juicer, I used a garlic presser and it’s one of the most tedious thing I’ve ever done. The worse thing was the amount of juice was not even much -_-
Anyway, long story short, the milk dessert that I so looked forward to eating failed. I think it’s something to do with the “fake” milk from 7-11. I ended up drinking steamed sweetened, eggy milk with ginger juice. Nasty shit, but as I told my boyfriend, I ALWAYS eat my own food. I just forgot to mention “regardless of bad or good”.
# – Yeap, this is a picture of the eggy, gingery, milk mess I gulped down. I bet it made me strong & healthy.
So I did more scientific (ahem) research and apparently, warm milk coagulates upon contact with ginger juice. So the recipe that I was following which called for all ingredients to be mixed together and steamed was utter bollocks and to be honest, a pain in the ass :P
Without further ado, please allow me to share my recipe for milk pudding:
First of all, you need the following ingredients; milk, sugar and ginger.
# – Milk. Make sure that the ingredient list on the carton has only ONE ingredient – milk. Anything more is NOT MILK!
# – Sugar. I used honey rock sugar because I happen to have them. I guess you can use other types of sugar that you fancy.
# – Ginger. Find ones that are not too young and not too old.
First of all, juice the damn gingers. This is the part that I hate most but it must be done. I recommend using an electrical juicer or even pestle/mortar. Ideally there shouldn’t be any fibre in the juice for a smoother pudding but cause I’m just messy like that and I don’t mind a bit of bite to it, I didn’t bother to remove the bits of ginger.
# – I used a garlic presser but if you’ve got better methods, please knock yourself out.
# – The amount of juice was not much. So do buy more ginger than you think you need. At least when you’ve got enough juice you can keep the rest another time. Or more milk pudding :D
From my experiments, the best ratio of milk and ginger juice to ensure coagulation is 2:1. So lets say you’re hoping to coagulate a cup of milk, please make sure you’ve got at least 1/2 cup of ginger juice!
# – Heat up the milk. The amount should be twice the amount of ginger juice you’ve got. Remember, the objective here is to warm it up, not boil. DON’T BOIL THE MILK.
# – Then add sugar to your taste and stir till it melts. DON’T BOIL THE MILK.
As soon as you see the tiny bubbles forming around the edge of the milk surface, lift the pot off the fire and continue stirring for another minute. After that just pour the sweetened warm milk into the ginger juice and leave it be for 5-10 minutes. Be patient and watch the milk magically coagulates!
To test whether it has solidified properly, put a spoon on top of the pudding. If the spoon sank, sorry I have failed you. If it stayed on top, congratulations!
# – The spoon stays afloat. Success!
If you like your dessert to be piping hot, you can steam it for a while too. I don’t recommend heating it up in the microwave because I haven’t done it myself but why not? Just make sure you’ve got cleaning cloth in hand just in case it decides to explode.
Happy cooking, peeps!
