Rambutan Jelly — Chinese Food & Other Stuff

I don’t remember when lychee jelly cups became a thing, but I remember having them as a kid around the time li hing mui drops were popular in the late-90s in Hawaii. After getting some of my new porcelain from Wing On Wo & Co, I wanted to play around with transparency to highlight the craftsmanship on the plate, while making a good tasting fruit jelly, and reimagining a different take on a Chinese candy. I'm not entirely sure of the origin of these fruit jellies, but I have always associated them as a Chinese candy since I remember them first sold at Chinese stores.

I was never too big on the lychee jelly cups since I don’t have a sweet tooth. I remember once when I was pretty young in China and some family or family friends had brought over some freshly picked lychee, I loved the ones that were perfectly unripened. Just tart and floral enough that it would taste very refreshing.

As I was putting this together, I thought I would need to do a few things. One is to apply the agar-agar clarification technique from Dave Arnold, seen in the Gin and Tonic I made. At the time of making this, I knew of a few springtime flowers that would be available to use. While most of the dish would be as transparent as possible, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to go the extra step an add in some edible flowers like redbuds. The ones I had were faintly sweet, so it would pair well with the delicate flavor of rambutan.

When I went to one of my usual grocery stops Tai Nam Market in Uptown, they only had rambutans which I like more than lychee. If I wanted to stick with using some blooming flowers, I knew time was of the essence and I had to just work with rambutans instead.

One thing that shouldn’t have surprised me, but did, was the tiny amount of juice I got. After spending about $5 on a box of 24 rambutans. I washed, cut, peeled, and pit each one by hand. After sending them through a cold juicer, it only yielded about 150ml of juice. It’s quite a bit of manual work for this, but knowing that I put in this much works makes it taste all the more satisfying. It's pretty crazy how the agar-agar clarification works so well and I love this technique when it works.

I’m pretty happy to find out that the juice does not brown a lot like apple juice and that it clarified very nicely. However, one thing I will need to do when remaking this is to reduce the amount of water in the agar-agar stage of clarification. Needing to bloom agar-agar and gelatin separately to avoid cooking the juice, I think it would be best to reduce the amount of added water at the agar-agar stage by about half.

However, don't be intimidated by making this. Other than having to just measure out some stuff with a digital scale, this recipe is pretty much like making jello twice.

RECIPE:
At least 25 rambutan, makes about 150ml of juice
Lime juice to taste
Water
Agar-agar
Gelatin
Redbuds or other edible flowers (optional)
Gold leaf (optional AF)

Wash, peel, and pit the rambutan. Cold press in a juicer and measure how much rambutan juice you have by volume. Add freshly squeezed lime juice to taste. I like to add a tiny amount at a time (¼ tsp at a time) until you taste the juice as noticeably brighter, but not to the point that you can really tell that lime is in it.

By a volume ratio, measure out 3 parts of juice to 1 part of water and place the water in a small saucepan. Take the total amount juice and water by ml and add 0.2% agar-agar to the cold water. For example, if you have 750ml juice, then you will need 250ml water. The total amount of liquid will be 1L and you will need 2g of agar-agar.

Whisk the agar-agar in the pot to dissolve while the water is cold. Bring it to a boil and cover. Turn the heat to low for about 3 minutes. Take the pot off the stove and while whisking, add the juice to the saucepan. Then empty the juice in a container and freeze overnight.

In a cheesecloth lined strainer, set over a bowl, unmold the frozen juice and let this thaw. You will get clear juice. Carefully discard the pulp and wring out any juice left in the cheesecloth.

With the clarified juice, in a small sauce pot, add water that is 20% by volume from the clarified juice. Take the total amount of clarified juice and the added water, then measure out 3% of gelatin by grams.

Whisk the gelatin into the cold water, and bring to a boil. Cover and simmer for another 3 minutes like agar-agar. Take the saucepot off the heat and while whisking, add the clarified juice to the hot water. Pour the juice into bowls and skim off any bubbles. Carefully wrap with plastic wrap and refrigerate until set firm.

Meanwhile make the garnish. Rinse the redbuds and pick off any excess stems. Set a small bowl with some water. Carefully tear off some small pieces of gold leaf and set in the water. Dip the flower in parts of the gold, then submerge in water to have the water wrap the gold around the petals. Set aside.