Red bean sweet and my childhood, Forum Restaurant (Ah Yat Abalone), Ramada Menam Riverside BKK

A full review will be done later on this superb restaurant on the riverside of BKK. Why this red bean sweet is singled out. These few nights I came to think about the various ways of making this all-time Cantonese dessert. When my friend wanna complain "oh, this red bean sweet is boiled with some burnt-smelling.". I immediately took it over like I found a new land. I almost forgot this one. One of the nostalgic cooking of red bean sweet. In the old time, my mother and grand mom often boil soup or red bean sweet in clay pot. So there will be some dried out bean-paste on the inner side of the pot. That delivered a nice aromatic flavour in the sweet. So when I tasted it again in this restaurant, the childhood memory was brought back. The old kitchen where my mother, grand mom and aunt were so busy in it. This came to me out of the blue, and so fondly. I even recall them to use some orange peel to cook red bean sweet. My mom used cane sugar bar to make it even more aromatic. The kitchen was a laboratory to me.

After a while, it's not surprising for this restaurant to have this nostalgic red bean sweet since Ah Yat strongly recommend cooking food (e.g. his renowned abalone) in clay pot. That's the key and that's the thing we often miss, in today's "xxx outer-space titanium" or "100 year durable non-scratchy stain-proof xxxx non-sticky" cooking ware. Unfortunately this restaurant used some poor red bean that it didn't deliver the "refined bean paste" texture.