Oxymorons:Easy run.
Holy crap.
Asian dessert.
My professional role model, Jeffrey Steingarten, once compared Indian desserts to face creams. Indians aren't the only Asians whose sweets stink. Japanese mochi - gelatinous wads of rice paste filled with red beans - are retired wrist rests. Taiwanese bubble tea is not even bubbly; it's watered-down tapioca pudding. You could argue that most Asian cultures, living as they do on lands fertile with fruit, have little incentive to develop desserts. But I wouldn't listen.
The world's largest continent needs bar desserts like Africa needs foreign investment. Because I am good and because I am American, I will bestow unsolicited brownie and blondie recipes upon the populous nations of Asian. Thank me later guys.
This one's for you, Thailand: ginger-spiked blondies studded with dried papaya and pineapple and drizzled with a lime-coconut glaze. You can call the blondies Phom See Thwaangs, which may or may not mean "blonde hair color." I'm calling them Thai Thaangs. Since yours is a wet country, I've made these bars a little dry; use stale Thai Thaangs to wipe up monsoon messes! Finding ingredients for this recipe should pose no problem: ginger, pineapple, lime, and coconut all grow in Thai soil.You know what else grows in Thai soil? Athletic shoes. Just kidding.
7 comments:
its about time we got some thai desserts besides sticky rice, these look great!
Sticky rice rocks, imo, but these look solid too... I'm headed to Thailand in a few weeks...I'll let you know if they serve me anything that comes close.
Just like ethnic clothing can take various forms, ethnic sweets can vary, too.
I would not be so confident to say that the "populous nations of Asian" "needs" blondies... these cultures have thrived for thousands of years without Western influences and they have done just fine. I don't believe it is your place to poke fun at Thailand, in particular, just because you are "good and American".
It would be fifty times more appropriate to just say that this is your variation using Thai-inspired ingredients -- it doesn't get simpler than that.
Have you ever traveled to any Asian country? Do yourself a favor and hop on a plane to get properly educated about their cuisine before throwing insults left and right.
Jess,
Nearly everything I write, I write in jest. Nobody - neither Asians nor Scandinavians nor the animal kingdom - needs brownies or blondies. To say that they do is an extension of my purposefully overblown literary style.
My "good and American" riff was an exercise in irony. We Americans do a lot of things because we think we know better, and we end up looking like fools in the process. I was mimicking the benevolent American ego.
I lived in rural Japan for three years, and have visited Korea.
Thanks for the comment.
haha, oxymorons indeed :0)
mmm, EXCELLENT dessert you've got there!!
Holy yum. I could go into a tropical haze just looking at this deliciousness.
What? No recipe? Those look great, please post the recipe.
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