Tapioca and the Swamp of Sadness

Tapioca pudding is the premier pudding in my mind.  I like simple foods that allow you to taste the basic ingredients.  Tapioca pudding is as simple as they come with milk, eggs, sugar, and vanilla.  To me tapioca is like hummus, a uncomplicated food canvas on which you can paint your own masterpiece with additions like fruit, cocoa, spices, etc.  (Note: I don't put fruit on my hummus).  I often put a dash of nutmeg in my recipe to give it a warm autumn flavor, but you can really do anything you want to tapioca.

My dad, who likes adventure in the kitchen, uses a mixture of tapioca and vanilla pudding for something he eloquently calls "Pimple Pudding."  A dollop of this heavy pudding goes down on the dish first.  Followed by a big spoonful of homemade raspberry pie filling.  He tops it of with a little whipped cream on top.  Cream, red, white.  Pimple Pudding.  You get the picture.  A culinary treat.  I don't have a picture of the pudding, and for the sake of my reader (yes, singular), I digress from posting pimple pictures.  Here is an illustration to at least give you something to think about.

So being a tapioca guy, I decided to make my own from scratch.  And from scratch, I mean large tapioca pearls that require soaking as opposed to Minute Tapioca which I usually make at home.  At first, I wasn't sure I wanted to follow through.  Here is a comparison of the directions for each method.

The Instant Stuff

• 1/3 cup sugar
• 3 tablespoons minute tapioca
• 2 3/4 cups milk
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions

1. Mix sugar, tapioca, milk and egg in a saucepan, let set 5 minutes.
2. Cook on medium heat, stirring constantly, til mixture comes to a full boil.
3. Remove from heat, then stir in vanilla.
4. Cool 20 minutes, then stir.
5. Serve warm or cold.

The Not-So-Instant Stuff

Follow this link for directions, they are too long to type.

So all that being said, I wanted to do some "real" tapioca the way the founding fathers of tapioca wanted it to be.  I started out on my adventure soaking the pearls overnight, slow cooking them in a make-shift double boiler, and slowly combining the eggs with my hot mixture.  I was like Picasso the way I was gingerly mixing my masterpiece.  I was almost done.  I had fluffed my egg whites to rigid peaks and was ready to fold them into my hot pudding for the final touch.  This is a very important step because the hot pudding will cook the egg whites, so my timing and technique needed to be perfect.

Right when I placed the egg whites on top of the pudding I hear "KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK."  Instantly, I remembered that I had some visitors coming for an important meeting.  I had totally forgotten.  Furthermore, because it was a hot summer day,  I was not dressed adequately to receive company. To be frank, my appearance like this in public would probably violate city ordinances.  Kristin couldn't answer the door because she was in my same situation with the addition of a hungry baby in her arms.  I was caught between my pudding and my guests.  I could finish stirring, but it would take another 3-4 minutes and then I would have to get dressed.  Considering the importance of my meeting, I dropped the spoon and ran to find some pants and a shirt.  I'm pretty sure I felt like Atreyu in Never Ending Story when his horse Artax succumbed to the Swamp of Sadness. (For full dramatic effect, please watch the video.

To make a long story short, my great pudding also succumbed the Swamp of Sadness.  When I returned from my meeting, my pudding was a mess.  The egg whites were not mixed in, yet they had cooked into a sea of nastiness.  The whole apartment smelled like boiled egg for days.  I tried to eat some of it, but it was destroyed.  Goodbye Artax.


I don't know if I can ever return to that tapioca battle field.  I have decided that minute tapioca pudding is a superb pudding, and I have no need to face the humiliating defeat that comes when you put it all on the line for fame, fortune, or just a really good pudding.  Next time you're at my apartment, ask for some minute tapioca, I'm sure I can oblige.