The final course of the traditional Chinese wedding banquet was Bird’s Nest Pudding. Everyone at my table hesitated except me.
“I’m never afraid to try dessert,” I said.
And really, what was there to be afraid of? After three hours of exotic dishes (shark’s fin, abalone, squab, whole fish), this was clearly pudding.
I assumed the delicate decoration on top of the mango custard was sugar crystals even though it looked like caviar.
“What is bird’s nest,” I asked the groom’s aunt as we were leaving.
“It’s bird’s nest,” she said.
“But what is it,” I asked again, pressing for a list of ingredients.
She smiled. “It’s the saliva of the bird used to make the nest. It’s very difficult to obtain and it’s very expensive.”
That explains those sugar crystals.
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