Chè Đậu Xanh

the Vietnamese mung bean sweet soup: split beans simmered soft with pandan and rock sugar, loosened to a pourable pudding, and served warm or over crushed ice under a lid of salted coconut cream

Origin: Vietnam

From the journey of Mung Bean.

Chè is not one dish but a whole category, the sweet soups and puddings of Vietnam, of which there are dozens and which are sold from glass-fronted carts, from market stalls, and from shops that make nothing else. Chè đậu xanh is amongst the plainest and the most commonly made: mung beans cooked down with sugar until they are soft enough to eat with a spoon but still loose enough to pour, scented with pandan, and finished with a thick coconut cream that has been deliberately salted, so that the dish arrives sweet, rich, and faintly saline all at once. That salting is a Vietnamese habit worth noticing, since it is what stops chè from cloying and it is applied to almost the entire category. The mung bean sits at the centre of Vietnamese sweet cooking in a way it does nowhere in India: đậu xanh, the green bean, fills the Tết rice cake bánh chưng, is pressed into the little dry cakes of Hải Dương that are the standard gift to take with tea, and colours a dozen other chè. Served warm it is a winter dish and a food for the unwell; poured over crushed ice with coconut cream it becomes one of the standard hot-weather sweets of Saigon, eaten in the afternoon in the heat.

Ingredients

Chè

  • 250 g split hulled mung beans (đậu xanh cà vỏ)
  • 1.2 litre water
  • 3 leaf pandan, knotted
  • 120 g rock sugar or caster sugar, or to taste
  • 1 pinch fine salt
  • 1 tbsp tapioca starch slaked in 3 tbsp cold water (optional)

Coconut Topping

  • 250 ml thick coconut cream
  • 0.5 tsp fine sea salt
  • 1 tsp caster sugar
  • 2 tsp tapioca starch slaked in 2 tbsp cold water

To Serve

  • 2 tbsp toasted sesame seeds or crushed roasted peanuts, to serve

Method

  1. Rinse the split mung beans until the water runs clear and soak them in cold water for 4 hours, or for 1 hour in hot water if pressed. Drain.
  2. Put the beans in a pan with the water and the knotted pandan leaves. Bring to the boil, skim the foam, then simmer partly covered for 25 to 30 minutes until the beans are entirely soft and beginning to break down.
  3. Remove the pandan. Mash about half the beans against the side of the pan with a spoon, or blend a ladleful and return it, leaving the rest whole. Stir in the sugar and the pinch of salt and simmer 5 minutes more.
  4. If you want it thicker, stir in the slaked tapioca starch and cook for a minute until it turns glossy. It should pour thickly from a ladle rather than hold its shape.
  5. Make the topping: warm the coconut cream with the salt and sugar, whisk in the slaked tapioca starch, and cook for a minute until lightly thickened. Serve the chè warm in bowls, or cooled over crushed ice, with a spoonful of the salted cream poured on top and a scattering of sesame or peanuts.

Notes

Pandan is sold frozen by Southeast Asian grocers and is much better than any extract; if you cannot get it, a strip of lime zest is a poor but acceptable stand-in. Rock sugar gives a cleaner sweetness than granulated and is the traditional choice. The same beans, cooked drier and mashed smooth with sugar, become the filling for bánh chưng at Tết and for the pressed bánh đậu xanh of Hải Dương. Chè keeps three days refrigerated and is eaten cold as readily as warm, but make the coconut topping fresh, since it separates on standing. For chè đậu xanh phổ tai, add a handful of soaked seaweed strips in the last five minutes, which is common in the north and gives a slippery contrast.

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