What it is
Taro sago (芋頭西米露, yutou ximilu) is a dessert soup of tiny translucent sago pearls in milk or coconut milk, with taro cooked until soft and starchy. It is one of the two traditional versions of sago soup, the other being plain coconut milk. In Taiwan it turns up everywhere from snack shops to hotel restaurants.
Where it came from
Sago soup (西米露, ximilu) belongs to Cantonese cooking. It is a tong sui (糖水), one of the sweet soups of southern Chinese cuisine, and Guangzhou is given as its home. It is now common in Taiwan, Hong Kong, mainland China and Vietnam. Taro and coconut milk are the traditional flavours; pumpkin, cantaloupe and red date versions are newer.
Sago itself is not a grain. It began as a starch taken from the pith of the sago palm (Metroxylon sagu) of the Malay Archipelago, still a staple food in Maluku and Papua in eastern Indonesia. Once the bark is stripped, the starchy core of the trunk is ground and rinsed again and again to wash out the woody fibre, and the starch is then rolled and sieved into small beads. Much of the sago sold today is mixed with cassava (tapioca) starch, or made entirely from it.
How it is made
The base is cooked sago pearls in milk, evaporated milk or coconut milk, sweetened with sugar. Taro is cooked until soft and added. When it is cooked slowly enough, the taro starts to break down and turns creamy. Old New Taiwanese Cuisine in Kaohsiung uses taro from Jiasian (甲仙), cooked slowly until it melts.
How to eat it
It is eaten as a dessert or sweet snack, from a bowl at a snack shop to the last course of a restaurant meal. In Kaohsiung, Old New Taiwanese Cuisine (老新台菜) serves it to close its eight-course set menus.
Around Taiwan
- Kaohsiung
- Jiasian, in Kaohsiung's hills, grows areca-heart taro (檳榔心芋), brought in by a camphor worker from Miaoli. When camphor declined, workers turned to taro, and taro ice shops multiplied after the Southern Cross-Island Highway opened in 1972. Old New Taiwanese Cuisine makes its sago soup with this taro.
