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ASIA
rising
Highlights from the Culinary Institute of America’s
2007 Worlds of Flavor Conference
S P E C I A L I N T E R A C T I V E I S S U E W I T H R E C I P E S L I N K E D T O O U R D ATA B A S E
2007 Worlds of
Flavor Conference
At first, the idea of encompassing all
of Asia in a three-day conference was
overwhelming. After all, Asia is the
world’s largest continent, comprising
37 countries and almost 4 billion people. But just as Europe and America
dominated the world for centuries,
Asia has fully emerged as a world leader in matters governmental, economic
and yes, culinary. It’s time to take a
closer look, and the Culinary Institute
of America’s 2007 Worlds of Flavor
conference, Rise of Asia, offered a
comprehensive point of view of this
group of cultures. Our knowledge of
Asia has grown tremendously since
our first tastes of stir-fried vegetables
and ramen noodles. And as intimidating as the continent’s size and diversity can be, there are common denominators that link many of these cultures. Their love of street foods and
the elaborate offerings of Vietnamese
pho, Indian tandoor-baked breads and
Thai papaya salads defy the idea that
all street foods come in a bun. Noodles
also tie many of these cultures together, whether made from wheat, rice or
mung beans, and steamed, fried or
simmered. Rice in varieties both longgrain and sticky fills bellies from Tokyo
to Hyderabad, while condiments like
chile paste and fish sauce perk up
palates throughout Asia with recipes
Following is Plate’s special report on
the 2007 conference. Take a few minutes to enjoy your own culinary tour
of Asia with recipes linked to our
database. As always, we’d like to thank
the staff of the Culinary Institute of
America’s Greystone Campus for their
assistance with recipes and other
materials, and Terrence McCarthy for
his beautiful photography.
Chandra Ram, editor
LEFT TO RIGHT: Conference Co-Host
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
Chef Suvir Saran perfects his roti on
a cast-iron griddle; Conference
Co-Host Chef Mai Pham checks the
temperature on Vietnamese pho.
Street eats
Some of Asia’s favorite dishes come
from dining à la cart
“In Asia, street foods dominate the food scene,” said vivacious Singapore food
critic and Asian food guide author K.F. Seetoh, who went onto explain that
while some of Asia’s delicacies originated on street carts, the peddlers themselves were once considered taboo.
“People had disdain for street food vendors; they were a notch above prostitutes
and murderers,” he said. The comical host may have poked fun at the stereotype of
the old-fashioned street vendor, but confirmed that today’s street hawkers’ rolling
kitchens are strictly regulated, with their own stall, electricity, exhaust, garbage and
sewage systems, set up to serve fantastic eats from morning until night.
One vendor, third-generation street hawker Zulkifli Bin Packeer Bawa, came all
the way from Singapore to share his recipe for roti prata, a soft Indian corn crêpe
he’s been perfecting for 30 years. “Zul is going to fry the roti prata, stretch the
dough and let it breath a little before lovingly pan-frying them so they get really
crispy on the outside and super-soft on the inside,” said Seetoh as the street chef
displayed the manual flipping of each thin crepe. “I flip 2,000 roti a day,” said Bawa
of the crêpes that cost about $1.50 each. “You can eat it with a bowl of curry or
chicken for lunch or pair with minced eggs and sausage to make it a breakfast
dish,” added Seetoh. “People add cheese or vanilla essence for a dessert.”
Another crêpe demonstrated during a special street food seminar was the lacy
pancakes, or roti jala, from the Grand Hyatt Singapore’s executive chef Brian
Cleere. The simple batter used to make these thin pancakes is put through a fine
strainer and onto a griddle as lacey strands, giving the crêpes their airy, soft tex-
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.
ture. “You can flavor the batter,” said Cleere of the simple egg, milk, salt and wheat
flour 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 his
famous street bread dough, with a demonstration of Indian naan, which he says is
commonly associated with the northwest frontier areas of India. A large stone tandoor oven was set up on the patio during lunch, and conference-goers quickly lined
up 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 street
food in some parts of North India, like Delhi, and a few cities in the frontier state of
Punjab, where you can see small four-wheel carts carrying small tandoors selling
naan with pre-cooked vegetarian curries like chhole (garbanzo beans) or tandoori
kebabs,” said Singh.
“Naans are found mostly in medium to upscale restaurants to accompany lavish
curries and tandoori kebabs,” he says. “When people find naans made in front of
their 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, a
Thai street food staple presented by chefs Kobkaew Naipinij and Bansani
Nawisamphan, and known as Thailand’s national salad. “This dish is chopped and
sliced right in the streets of Bangkok,” said Seetoh. “When making it, you need to
bruise, not smash the papaya.” Seetoh also suggests serving the dish with sticky
rice and skewered barbecue pork or grilled chicken for a lunch snack. “The dish is
spicy and uplifting, it really wakes up your palate,” he said.
Another common street food that wakes up morning palates is Lemon Grass
Restaurant Chef-Owner Mai Pham’s Vietnamese rice soup with chicken pho ga. Pham
suggests using a whole chicken to make the broth, and recommends garnishes of
scallions, cilantro, bean sprouts, fresh herbs, chiles and squeezes of lime, just as
they are offered on the streets of Vietnam.
Cleere uses chicken in another street food delicacy eaten for lunch or dinner, a
classic chicken curry cooked in a hot pot of onion, garlic, chili paste, clove, cardamom, curry powder and later tamarind water, salt, and coconut milk. “This dish
shows a passion for the freshness of herbs and spices,” said Seetoh, which he said
he believes is true of all authentic Asian street foods.
LEFT TO RIGHT: Duck treasure in nest, Executive
MENU SPOTLIGHT
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.
edible art
Stunning carvings, colors and optical illusions set
Asian dishes a cut above the rest
“This should be in the Smithsonian!” exclaimed master chef, author and TV host
Martin Yan after Chinese chefs Yue Liang Fu, Wen Ying Jin and Ming Hou Shan
skillfully transformed sliced pressed pork belly into an intricate, multi-layered
pyramid resting on baby bok choy and a chestnut pancake and stuffed with dry
bamboo shoots. Yan also described the dish, a braised sliced pork with bamboo
shoots as rich, juicy, succulent and moist, but the finished product, made from a
single piece of pork belly, looked almost too artful to eat.
“All of the imperial banquet dishes from China, Thailand, Singapore, Vietnam and
Japan are made with masterful skill,” said Yan as he introduced another elaborate
dish demonstrated by the same three chefs, a crispy Mandarin fish with sweet and sour
sauce. “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 no
demand and very high labor costs.”
The chefs cut whole Mandarin fish cut into a pine cone shape and topped it with a
colorful 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 the
fish and positioned to make it look like it was swimming on the plate.
“The Chinese believe in wholeness and completeness,” explained Yan. “They serve
the whole fish, rather than throw any part of it away. It’s good luck and good fortune.
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.
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 several novels, including “The Last Chinese Chef,” (Houghton Mifflin, 2007).
When chefs from the Royal Thai cooking school in Bangkok presented a dish, they
chose one that was fit for a king, literally. Demonstrated by mother-daughter duo
Ning and Kobkaew Naipinij, the impressive kao kwan was originally given to King
Rama as a gift 100 years ago from his daughter.
“The king was sick,” explained Ning. “The princess thought about things like
tamarind 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, coconut
milk and tamarind paste presented in a bowl adorned with leaves folded in a triangular shape and garnished with egg, dried fish, and shredded beef. “Thai food is for
health, flavor, cultural heritage and the eyes,” added Ning.
Another dish that dazzled conference-goers was Chef Wei Guo Qiu’s cabbage-like
dumplings. The trick-of-the-eye starch dumplings were stuffed with cabbage, pork and
shrimp, but also made to look like small green and white cabbages.
“In China you could have a dumpling banquet, with 108 different dumplings shaped
like cabbage, rabbits, ducks,” said Yan. It came from Northwestern China, where they
eat a lot of noodles and dumplings.”
It’s not dumplings, but fried, shredded potato that takes the shape of a delicate
bird’s nest in the duck treasure in nest presented by Chun Shuan Cai and Xian Hou
Sun of Beijing’s Da Dong Roast Duck Restaurant. Each potato nest is filled with a colorful mix of fried minced duck meat, fried pine nuts, boiled green peas and cubed
water chestnuts, that was both delicious and attractive to the eye. “Traditional
Chinese food like this isn’t just about filling your belly,” commented demonstration
moderator Fuchsia Dunlop.
“This is a different level of sophistication, education, culinary tradition derived
from 5,000 years of practice,” added Yan of the impressive dishes. “People don’t realize the effort, skill, love, passion and patience put into each plate.”
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
ON THE SIDE
noodling around
daikon radish for his daikon “fettuccine”
with tomato basil sauce.
Noodles made from wheat, rice and mung bean
tie everything together
“How long does it take someone to learn this?” conference presenter Fuchsia
Dunlop asked Xu Liu, as the young noodle chef from Beijing’s Made in China
restaurant pulled, twirled, twisted, and folded a long wad of thick dough in a
hypnotic fashion, until it finally threaded down to what seemed like thousands of
perfectly thin noodles. The art of pulling the lan zhou noodles, Liu told the captivated audience, can take about a year to perfect. The dough is simple—mostly
flour, salt and water—but the technique is complicated, as a very skilled chef
must knead, twist and cut the dough nearly 50 times before it separates into perfectly thin, noodle strands. The finished product looked delicious enough to eat
plain, but Liu dressed his noodles up with a soybean paste for Beijing noodles
with soybean paste. The paste is a mix of pork, leek, ginger, garlic, wine, soy
sauce, sugar, and chicken powder.
The demonstration was a conference highlight, but other noodles—from glass to
soba—took center stage throughout the conference. In a kitchen demonstration by
Korean chef Hee Sook Cho, stir-fried glass noodles were mixed with vegetables, mushrooms, beef and soy sauce in traditional japchae. The noodles were made with sweet
potato starch and then mixed in a colorful mélange of vegetables.
“It’s like a noodle salad with protein and crunchy vegetables,” said Host Chef Mai
Pham of Sacramento’s Lemon Grass Restaurant, of the dish served best at room temperature. For CIA Chef-Instructor Shirley Cheng’s chengdu noodles, she boiled soba
noodles before sprinkling them with vegetable oil and then topping them with more
than 10 Sichuan spices and ingredients like garlic, rice vinegar, brown sugar and soy
sauce. “It’s simple, like a street food,” Cheng said.
When it comes to traditional pad thai, Chef Chai Siriyarn of Marnee Thai restaurants in San Francisco is a true master. The chef, who won the Los Angeles pad thai
festival contest in 2000, explained that the secret to authentic pad thai is using rice
stick 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,” he
said of the recipe, which combines tamarind, shrimp, garlic and palm sugar with rice
noodle 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 with
Dungeness crab meat and Thai bird chiles or jalapeños.
The noodles in Chef Masaharu Morimoto’s daikon “fettuccine” with tomato basil
sauce weren’t greasy, gooey, or the least bit starchy, because they were made from
daikon 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’s
stir-fry glass noodles with crab. He combined Dungeness crab and glass noodles or
mung 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 a
minute and a half.” He also explained the importance of a wok when trying to prepare
this dish, not only for its intense heat (about 200,000 BTU), but for the way it brings
out 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 presenter Fuchsia Dunlop looks on and translates.
LEFT TO RIGHT: Sugared salmon with white soy
GREAT TASTES
sorbet and yuzu foam, Chef Masaharu Morimoto,
Morimoto, New York City; Badam Thandai,
Chef Abhijit Saha, The Park Bangalore, India.
Puckered-up
palates
Asian cooks welcome tangy, salty, spicy and bitter
flavors alone and combined
You 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 vegetables
with tangy yogurt and fermented rice cakes in India, or a dose of fish sauce atop
a Thai breakfast soup, it’s clear that America’s love of sweets doesn’t translate
to most Asian dishes.
“In general, the Chinese eat fewer sweet foods than Westerners,” commented conference presenter and Chinese cookbook author Fuchsia Dunlop. “It depends on the
region, 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 adore
multi-layered flavors, where you might find, for example, hot, sweet, numbing, salty
and sour tastes combined in a single dish,” she explains.
The Chinese art of balancing flavors is echoed in Japan, as in Chef Masaharu
Morimoto’s sugared salmon with white soy sorbet and yuzu foam. Morimoto balanced
the sweetness of the sugared salmon with sour yuzu and umami-laden white soy in
this dish.
“Flavor balance is so important in Japan,” noted Japanese cookbook author and
Roast pork with chile raisin oil and
Thai basil sauce, Chef Alexander Ong,
Betelnut, San Francisco.
conference presenter Elizabeth Andoh. “Sometimes people will talk about Japanese
food being bland in comparison to other Asian foods. The balance is more important
in Japan, rather that than tasting just spicy or sweet flavors.”
Spicy and sweet was just the combination Malaysian chef Alexander Ong, of San
Francisco’s Betelnut restaurant, wanted to achieve with his dish of roast pork with
chile raisin oil and Thai basil sauce.
“The basil sauce has fish sauce and Thai basil, so it has fresh and sour flavors, and
the chilies and raisins bring together spicy and sweet flavors,” noted Ong about the
combination.
Adding sweet flavors to savory ingredients is the philosophy behind Indian chef
Abhijit Saha’s almond and coconut chutney. Saha handles the potential for too much
sweetness 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 heat
from 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 the
sweet side but still tempered by savory ingredients is his badam thandai, a dessert
with almonds, cinnamon, and sugar spiced with peppercorns, saffron and cardamom
to cut the sweetness and make the result more interesting to those who follow the
Asian style of balancing flavors.
“The flavor combinations belong to an entire region, not just to one country,” said
cookbook author and presenter Naomi Duguid. “They are a characteristic of the
region’s shared palate.”
LEFT TO RIGHT: Lamb biriyani, Chef Nimmy
24/7
Paul, Kerala, India; Palappam,
Chef Nimmy Paul, Kerala, India.
Rice as nice
Asia’s staple grain feeds the spirit morning,
noon and night
If 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 presenter
Elizabeth Andoh, an expert on Japanese cooking, author and founder of A Taste of
Culture, a culinary arts center in Tokyo. “The word for cooked rice is the word for a
meal, 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 begin
with 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 prepared
by Koji Murakami, the executive chef at Sanraku in San Francisco. Lunch on the go
can comprise rice sandwiches called omusubi, an offering whose popularity she
likens to that of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, with rice formed around fillings
in the shape of triangles, golf balls or small logs. Dinner brings sushi or rice dishes in
a 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 about
every other Asian culture counts rice among its staples. Chinese cookbook author
Fuchsia Dunlop noted, “Rice is the staple grain in southern China, and is eaten at
almost 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: 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.
in dishes such as jeonju bibimbap prepared by Korean chef Myung Sook Lee, the
executive director of the Culinary Institute of California, and Kerala, India-based food
writer and chef Nimmy Paul’s lamb biriyani. Lee tops the rice and vegetables in her
bibimbap with a fried egg, similar to those found atop Japanese rice bowls, while
Paul’s biriyani bears some visual and flavor resemblance to other Southeast Asian
rice dishes, such as Chinese stir-fries and Thai curries.
“This kind of sharing came hundreds of years ago, when the Chinese went to
Thailand and shared their stir-frying techniques,” commented Chef Chai Siriyarn of
San Francisco’s Marnee Thai.
Just as prevalent in Asian cooking is rice flour, which is milled and used for pancakes and wrappers in every region where rice is a staple. South Indians commonly
breakfast 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 breakfast
or lunch, or with coconut cream and sugar for dessert. Siriyarn uses a different
coconut and rice flour combination for his Thai mochi, which he prepared with copresenter Kannika Siriyarn. Host Chef Mai Pham of Sacramento’s Lemon Grass
Restaurant took rice flour to more savory territory with her Vietnamese rice rolls
with shrimp, thin rice crêpes wrapped around shrimp and wood ear mushrooms.
Presenter Chef Charles Pham, of San Francisco’s Slanted Door, similarly created a
daikon rice cake, made by combining rice flour and cornstarch with vegetables to
create a cake that is steamed and then browned in a pan before it is drizzled with
chili soy sauce.
“They have a delicate texture, but so much flavor,” Pham said of the dishes.
“Rice allows you to create unlimited dishes.”
PERFECT PAIRINGS
Paired to a tea
Use the mineral, tannic and umami flavors in
Japanese tea to perfect your pairings
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.
Mention the art of pairing food and beverages, and most people in the industry
can rattle off at least a few favorite wine, beer, and cocktail pairings. But when it
comes to pairing Japanese tea with food, many culinarians are at a loss. The
British are known the world over for their teas—sometimes grand affairs with
pristinely cut delicate sandwiches, scones dripping with jam and clotted cream,
and assorted pastries. But Japanese green tea, replete with umami flavors and
tannins, requires more savory pairings.
Japanese green teas, known as ocha, range from those that are mild enough to be
served 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 savory
taste 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 that
pair well with Sauvignon Blanc.
“You want to show the delicate flavors of the tea,” she said, “and let those flavors
enhance the food you are eating.”
MacNeil led seminar participants through a tasting of sencha, tencha, and gyokuro
green teas. Gyokuro teas are of very high quality, using the youngest buds from the
highest-quality tea bushes. Sencha are the most popular teas made from the first new
leaves, and tencha is very rare, brewed cold for up to 15 hours and boasting an
hours-long finish. At the session, sencha was paired with fatty salmon and avocado
on a garlic chip to balance its clean flavors, while the tannins in gyokuro were
matched with prosciutto.
Japanese chefs have begun to use tea as an ingredient, noted conference presenter
and tea master Ryozou Taniguchi, of the Fukujuen tea shop in Kyoto. To illustrate
that 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, in
which he layered salmon, capers, onions, wasabi, and tea frita on sesame bread, for a
seemingly simple sandwich full of sharp and gentle umami flavors.
“It’s important that chefs have an open mind and a recognition that any experience
needs to be revisited, again and again, to understand the breadth and depth of what’s
there beneath the surface in Japanese cuisine,” said Conference presenter and
Japanese cookbook author Elizabeth Andoh.
LEFT TO RIGHT: Cookbook author and conference
GRAND FINALE
presenter Violet Oon; Chrysanthemum
shaved ice, Violet Oon, Singapore.
fruitice
Asia isn’t known for its pastries and desserts, and for good reason. After eating
spicy, tangy, flavorful food, sometimes in strong heat and humidity, the last thing
you 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 is
answered 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 melons
and lychees in the chrysanthemum shaved ice created by Singaporean cookbook
author 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 caves
in the mountains so that the ice would not melt throughout the fiery hot summer
months. Royalty and the elite used to enjoy shaved ice desserts with fresh fruits on
top to chill them.”
Shaved ice is a popular offering at Singapore’s many street stands and markets, as
well as those vendors in other Southeast Asian countries, including Japan, Malaysia,
Korea, and Taiwan. The syrups, fruit and other toppings answer the cry for something sweet after a meal, and the ice tempers the richness and keeps the dessert
light.
“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 an
ode to a traditional Singapore dessert.”