easy ginger milk agar pudding with pistachio nuts

Perhaps our simple humble kitchen can be nicknamed as midnight kitchen, because I often use it around midnight hours.

Last night, I prepared a surprise dessert for Candida, who loves ginger a lot.



A mini jar of ginger milk agar pudding with pistachio nuts (姜撞奶布丁配开心果) makes a lovely heart warming dessert for an afternoon tea break.



Pistachio ... always brings back a happy memory of savoring delicious pistachio-flavored gelato in Italy! 



Servings: 12
Preparation & cooking time: 15 minutes

Ingredients:
♥ 10g agar / seaweed powder*
♥ 1 large knob (2 oz) ginger (姜), chopped
♥ 110g (4 oz) sugar (糖 )
♥ 500ml water, filtered if possible
♥ 500ml fresh milk (鲜奶)
♥ 4 tbsp pistachio nuts (开心果), chopped
♥ 2 tbsp peanuts (花生), chopped

* I bought Swallow Globe brand agar.

Directions:
1. Boil ginger & sugar with water. Strain to remove ginger remnants.
2. In a pot, add agar powder to milk & bring to boil. Add ginger water & stir gently until each ingredient dissolves evenly.
3. While hot, immediately pour ginger milk agar mixture into container(s) of choice. You can use jars, mugs, bowls, or lovely-shaped molds.
4. Garnish with nuts. If you want the nuts to stay on the top surface only, wait for 5 minutes before gently dropping the nuts. Alternatively, to create bilayers of nuts wrapping the milk agar pudding, you can pre-garnish the bottom part of jars with nuts.
5. Once the temperature drops to room temperature, keep in fridge. Serve chilled.



Tips:
♥ Buy non-colored agar powder. If you want to color it, use natural ingredients such as beetroot (red/pink) or spinach (green).
♥ If you prefer softer texture, may I suggest ginger milk curd with egg white?

Check also our other #5minutemeal recipes.

Bonus! a ministory

It is fun to imagine the bilayers of nuts like the phospholipid bilayers that form membranes in our cells.

The nuts are like the hydrophilic phosphate heads that point out to the exterior on either side of the bilayer; the ginger milk agar pudding is like the hydrophobic tails that point in to the core of the bilayer.

A difference between nutty ginger milk agar pudding and phospholipid bilayers is that the former is static once it solidifies, whereas the latter is dynamic and dancing continuously in our cells.  

With love,
ServicefromHeart
20140327