tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4195607963333701035.post1417280810196763577..comments2022-03-19T06:29:32.935-07:00Comments on Quenelle Plus: This is a delicious-looking cloudChristinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15348698401191923598noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4195607963333701035.post-30506561380775366562007-09-13T22:21:00.000-07:002007-09-13T22:21:00.000-07:00The "stand-alone, fully contained dessert experien...The "stand-alone, fully contained dessert experience" this cloud reminds you of may, in fact, be one you've never had ... yet. I am visiting LA -- and, as luck would have it, just last night my good friend Ian Chang introduced me to "Taiwanese Ice," which I first thought was some kind of crack cocaine. But it's not.<BR/><BR/>After a knock-your-socks-off Sichuanese meal at Chung King in San Gabriel, we toodled into a nameless (at least to me) all-night, by-the-numbers Chinese restaurant nearby. Ian ordered up a plate of red beans, sticky rice balls, green beans and mango pudding, which the xiaojie then topped with a butt-load of shaved ice over which she squirted about a half a squirt-bottle's worth of condensed milk. <BR/><BR/>It sounds ... a little nasty, but it's wonderful. The beans-and-such are slightly sweet, and there are so many conflicting sensations colliding: beans, sweet, gummy rice balls, freezy pangs of shaved-ice splendor, &C &c &c, that it really adds up to something wonderful.<BR/><BR/>The only bad thing is that, if you don't keep pace with the ice's melting, you end up with a bowl full of milky water with beans floating around in it. <BR/><BR/>Anyway, THE POINT of all this is that when the xiaojie hands the concoction over, it looks just like that cloud: Beans and whatnot buried underneath a rakish cone of shaved ice. Ian says that in Taiwan they actually do it the other way around: The ice is the bottom & the condiments are on top. But maybe the clouds in Taiwan look upside-down, too.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08964675598553137721noreply@blogger.com