Chinese dessert tends to be fruits, or hot soups, or biscuits of some sort. Ask anyone who's been to a traditional Chinese meal, they always serve a fruit/biscuit platter with some hot dessert soup. On the rare occasion, you get those meals where they serve this coconut milk pudding with papaya. Its one of the ways you can get me to eat a papaya haha. The coconut flavour mixed with papaya is godly.
My family, namely my mom, is a master experimenter. She always manages to recreate things I like with a good degree of accuracy, and she decided to recreate this dish along with a another version where red bean and coconut milk was used.
The milk pudding was basically milk + coconut cream + gelatin mixture. The exact ratios determine the consistency of the final product. The finally cosistency should be creamy like panna cotta but a bit sturdier to ensure it won't mush up when cut into. Experiment a bit to get the right ratio, I don't have this handy untill we recreate it next time. The mixture is then filled into a hollowed out papaya to set in the fridge.
The red bean pudding was a similar mixture with red bean paste mixed in. It was set in a square container which was then taken out of for plating. The red bean paste used was made with red beans manually. It was made with whole Azuki red beans boiled down slowly, mashed and sugared to taste.
Overall, I preferred the red bean pudding more because I am not a big fan of papaya, but these were definitely an interesting dessert to try out.
