烏龍，仙草，愛玉: Oolong Jelly Bowl

a recipe for a damn good dish of botanical jellies, plus a new dessert bundle

This is Yun Hai Taiwan Stories, a newsletter about Taiwanese food and culture by Lisa Cheng Smith 鄭衍莉, founder of Yun Hai. If you aren’t yet a subscriber, sign up here.

I know it’s been awhile. The truth is, we planned to release a set of summer dessert recipes featuring our Ai Yu Jelly and Grass Jelly last month. Then Mei Liao, Zoey Gong, and Remi Ishizuka shared our Ai Yu and Grass Jellies with their massive followings, and we sold out. Yay! So, instead of preparing this letter in advance, I sat around eating dried green mango for a month, and then whipped up some dessert bowls on my back porch this week when our replenishment finally came in. It rained on me. I deserved it.

Read on for three truly wild desserts, pick up our jelly ingredients bundle, and let the spirit of improvisation run away with you. Don’t miss our brief reflection on Taiwan’s presence in the Olympics and a sneak peek of our itty-bitty-little-big Taiwanese cooking show, rolling out this fall.

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In recent months, humility has been a recurring theme in conversations with Taiwanese friends. We’ve observed that modesty is a quality that’s embedded in many corners of Taiwanese society. When Taiwan’s Lee Yang (李洋) and Wang Chi-lin (王齊麟) beat China to win the Olympic badminton gold medal, they thanked their supporters but also promised to continue to improve. Even as champions, say less, do more, 加油.

(P.S. if you didn’t follow the political censorship regarding Taiwan at the Olympics, read about it here. Taiwan’s was one of three flags banned at the Olympics, the others being Russia and Belarus. Ironic that the IOC has chosen to punish Russia and Belarus for invading Ukraine, but enables China to violate Taiwan through censorship and propaganda, in essentially the same breath. I truly loved seeing Taiwan’s athletes compete and win on the world stage, but every moment hurt.)

“We thank all the support we have received and will continue to work hard. We will put out better performances in the future," Wang said. Source: Reuters.

We experience this humble deflection with our artisanal partners too. Farmers growing beautiful fruits, soy sauce brewers with a generations of knowledge, and elders who have honed their skills for a lifetime often pass praise on, attributing their achievements to collective hard work, time and history, or the support of the community (also true). I think locals know how to read between the lines and absorb what’s unsaid, but I’ve found that western (or western-born) visitors, including myself, sometimes need to learn how to see—look past the surface and read the work.

I’ve often heard (and in fact said) that Taiwan hasn’t historically been good at exporting its stories and its craft to an international audience. But how can we expect this? It’s not up to the craftsperson to represent themselves in a way that’s parseable for foreign eyes, to romanticize themselves for someone else’s benefit, to go against their grain of self-expression. It’s up to the viewer to look. And then to share. Taiwan must be seen.

In this spirit, we’ve spent the last few weeks immersed in work on a Taiwanese cooking show we’re launching this fall. It’s not network, it’s self-initiated—an experimental effort to champion Taiwan in our own way and share what we’ve learned with as many folks as possible. I grew up in the land of fake it ‘til you make it, so yeah, catch me in my (friend’s) kitchen on YouTube cooking up some cabbage rice.

They had to pry me out of this set. Photo: Naomi Munro

We have a surprise sponsor (ok, it’s Tatung), and our pals at Night Shift Studios are helping us produce it. Just like when we built our general store in Williamsburg, friends and fam have come out of the woodwork to help us; we have so much gratitude for them (and for you!). We’re not exactly sure when or how we’ll launch it yet, but it will likely be October and we’re very excited. Please sign up here if you’re interested in a sneak preview or premiere.

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Oolong Mulberry Double Jelly Bowl

Working on set and putting myself out in front of a camera as a home cook (oh yeah and we also lost power and a tree fell down) reminded me that things need not be precious to be impactful. Make small moves, not big ones. Yun Hai started off as an IG account to document things for myself and a handful of friends. The handful has grown, but the spirit is the same.

Look into my eyes.

So, today I’m presenting a recipe (or three) from my home kitchen that brought me joy: an Oolong Mulberry Jelly Bowl (aka Untamed Pond aka Primordial Sweet Soup). It’s not explicitly traditional, though it does use grass jelly, ai yu jelly, oolong tea, and mulberry, and is inspired by the myriad combinations of Taiwanese jelly desserts I’ve come across in my lifetime.

I’ve always loved the spirit of experimentation captured in Taiwanese desserts. Almost anything goes. Put some sweet glutinous rice dumplings (碱粽) into shaved ice? Ok. Top it with flan? Ok. Drink it? Sure. This mentality gave rise to bubble tea in the 1980s, but definitely predates it.

A bowl of tofu pudding 豆花 I had at 原豆粹食 Good Soyfoods in Yuanli, featuring black sugar ice slush, white tapioca pearls, red bean, and soy milk.

You can’t go wrong with any mix of the cooling, chewy, botanical ingredients that make up Taiwanese desserts. Sometimes they’re neat, more often messy, and I adore the casual, jiggly, swip-swop nature of it all. I find them beautiful—a primeval aesthetic, the opposite of a frosted cake. Jellies are defined by chaos, but orderly in their own way.

When we first started importing Ai Yu (Ogio) Jelly and Mesona (Grass Jelly), two of Taiwan’s most well known botanical jigglers, I was dead-set on recreating remembered desserts perfectly (see newsletter above). Now that we’ve had them around for awhile, I’ve lightened up. Part of incorporating Taiwanese cuisine into one’s daily life is to be looser with the inputs and outputs (cue cooking show intro).

A study in texture. Berry Milk Oolong Jelly.

I put nectarines in it this time. Mint. Mulberry jam. Cream. Oolong tea sugar syrup. Making jellies should be like making any easy dessert — know your elements, kitchen sink it a bit, measure when necessary, and always use what’s in season.

The elements of this recipe are:

• Grass Jelly 仙草: a richly colored herbal jelly made from mesona chinesis, a plant in the mint family. It sort of tastes like rooiboos tea, but is a thing all its own. First, boil it into tea and sweeten it with rock sugar. Stop there and guzzle it, or set it into a loose suspension with sweet potato starch. And, if you’re feeling ambitious, freeze it into ice cube trays, and put that in a mini ice crusher for a grass jelly granita, Meet Fresh style.

• Ai Yu Jelly 愛玉: an amber jelly made by rinsing the seeds of the Ai Yu fig in water. Be sure to use hard water for best results; my go-to is Fiji (#notsponsored). The pectin washes off the seeds and sets the water into a tender, slippery, gravity defying suspension for about 24 hours. The definition of ephemeral.

• Ai Yu Tea Jelly 愛玉茶凍: For even more spring in your step, make a cold brew with red oolong tea using mineral water, and set that into jelly instead of water.

• Red Oolong simple syrup: I love to use the Red Oolong from BANGtea in desserts. It’s got a strong, robust flavor and is great for standing out among all the other ingredients. To make oolong tea syrup, brew some strong tea and then bring it to a simmer with a 1:1 ratio of raw sugar. It’s delicious and also.. caffeinated. See tea jelly above.

• Taiwanese Mulberry Jam: People always ask us what to do with our Taiwanese fruit jams. I’m like… it’s jam. Just kidding, it is a little different, actually. Juicier, saucier, and a little less sweet than typical varieties, it’s a perfect fruit topping. When you mix it with ice and oolong tea syrup, it transforms into a refreshing berry flavored tea. Add seltzer for the fuzzies.

For your convenience, we’ve bundled together the jelly ingredients and are offering those online; supplies are limited. The bundles include Ai Yu Jelly, Grass Jelly, Mulberry Tea, and our very favorite BANGtea red oolong (limited quantities of that). Scroll down for more info or just head to our site to pick one up.

Once you have these ingredients prepared (or any others you choose to add, think boba pearls, mung bean, or steamed taro), just riff. The magic is all in the assembly. I’ve made three variations and have shared the recipe on our website. Demonstrations from my back porch in the videos below.

Berry Milk Oolong Jelly

This one is loosely based on fruit milks found throughout Taiwan, and the convention of serving grass jelly with a little bit of coffee creamer, poured over just before digging in. The berry jam and the cream combine to create an almost milkshake like flavor, balanced out by the light textures and mild flavors of the jewel-like jellies. Note: never use dairy and lemon juice in the same bowl, or the dairy will curdle.

Mulberry Grass Jelly Ice

A dark bowl of grass jelly looks infinite and dimensionless, as deeply reflective as obsidian. But I threw some nectarines on it to bring it back up to the surface of the earth. In this bowl, I make ice out of grass jelly and then crush it as the base, creating a texture reminiscent of a granita (I dream of slushie).

Double Jelly Shaved Ice with Mulberry Fruit Tea

This is a variation on the classic lemon honey Ai Yu Jelly combination. The mulberry jam and oolong tea syrup combine effortlessly into the familiar flavors of mulberry fruit tea (a popular drink around Taiwan), and the lemon brings the entire assembly into the sunshine. I love how the purple mulberry shows through the clear Ai Yu jelly, creating a mixture of colors—dark, light and royal.

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Oolong Jelly Bowl Bundle

This bundle has everything you need to make a mulberry oolong jelly bowl of your own, at a 12% off list. Quantities are limited because there’s only so much Red Oolong tea left from the season’s harvest!

The bundle includes:

• Alishan Ai Yu Jelly Kit: slippery and bouncy amber jelly made from the seeds of the Ai Yu Jelly Fig

• Organic Grass Jelly Herb: make this herb into a tea or a jelly with notes of mountain air and rooibos

• Taiwanese Mulberry Jam: deeply sweet with a slight sour pucker, like crushing fresh mulberries between your fingers and eating them

• BANGtea Red Oolong (Fall ‘23): notes of pecan, coffee grounds, red plum—excellent when brewed hot or cold

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Thanks, as always, for reading. And thanks even more for considering (as I know you are right now) trying your hand at jelly preparation. I sincerely hope these recipes inspire you to do your own thing. Stay tuned to our Instagram feed and our YouTube channel for an Ai Yu Tea Jelly + Passionfruit drink demo in the coming weeks.

And finally, we’re working on a special mooncake collaboration (shipping nationwide this time), so be on the lookout for that later this month.

Defined by chaos, but orderly in my own way,
Lisa Cheng Smith 鄭衍莉

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Written with editorial support by Amalissa Uytingco, Jasmine Huang, and Lillian Lin. If you enjoyed this newsletter, please share it with friends and subscribe if you haven’t already. I email once a month, sometimes more, sometimes less. For more Taiwanese food, head to yunhai.shop, follow us on instagram and twitter, or view the newsletter archives.