Agar Agar

I made agar-agar today……. it’s almost like gelatin, except it’s a gelatinous substance which is derived of seaweed instead of from the collagen of an animal’s bones or skin. So, I guess this is considered vegetarian?

Here’s how agar-agar looks like for those of you whose not familiar with this “animal free gelatin”. It looks kinda like strands of raffia string, but of course edible and is white/ semi translucent in color. You should be able to get a package of this from an Asian grocery store for less than USD2 per packet. I got mind for about $1.45 per packet of 30 g.

I used about half of the agar agar in the packet; about 15g and added about 6 cups of water (including whatever syrup/juice) to it.  I also added some heavy syrup from the canned peach I added to my agar agar. I boiled the 6 cups of water (mixed with syrup) with some knotted pandan leaves and sugar to taste. After all the agar agar has been dissolved, I sieved the mixture into a shallow dish (about 1-1/2” deep) so that the agar agar hardens quickly and will be smooth. Before that, I placed some cut up peaches and arranged them onto the dish. I made sure, I’ll have a piece of fruit with each bite size cut I will be doing later.

After pouring the mixture into the dish, I still need to roughly rearrange the peaches and space them out accordingly. I let it cool down first almost completely before putting it in the fridge to further cool it down. It will turn slightly opaque when it’s cooled down.

 

Cut it up into bite size pieces and savoring every piece of it. Ideally each piece should have a piece of fruit in it. You could use other fruits as you wish, as long as it’s bite size..(though it might be tougher to cut the agar agar with fruits in it……. =)..Totally yumilicious for a hot summer day =)