Onde the lonely

The Nyonyas (the Straits folk of Malaysia and Singapore) and the Malays stake equal claim to a little green glutinous rice flour ball, filled with liquid palm sugar, steamed and rolled in fresh desiccated coconut. Called onde-onde, it is one of the hardest of Malaysia’s myriad desserts to get right. There’s no passable mark for this dish. It either sinks or soars.

I’ve been having a whole bunch of sinkers this time around. Onde-onde is supposed to be delicate – a whole ball is supposed to fit genteelly into the mouth without untoward bulging or the hamster-hoarding effect. When I was a kid, they used to be as small as quail’s eggs. These days, one is lucky if they come as small as ping pong balls.

I bought some yesterday from the mobile kuih van near Giant in SS4.  Across the board, this guy makes good kuih – authentic, flavoursome, quite delicate. Thus I hazarded to buy RM2 worth of his onde-onde. RM1 gets you five pieces. 

Now there are seven balls mouldering on the countertop. 

While not inedible, the onde was stodgy and heavy. It looked cellulite-laden and dumpy. I looked at it and I felt tired. Not even the purity of the beige coconut could save it.

The litmus test is the biting into. The perfect onde-onde will pop instantly when bitten, releasing a wash of liquid, rich sweetness. This one’s palm sugar filling had seeped through the dough walls of the rice flour, so there was hardly anything to escape. To add insult to injury, the tightwads had used brown sugar instead of palm sugar, and had not bothered to melt it down properly, resulting in an unpleasant gritty, sandy mouthful. 

It’s not an easy dessert to make, onde-onde. It takes patience and a certain chemical knowhow, not to mention a deftness of hand. In the days of yore when people did one thing at a time and did it well, a good onde-onde was almost expected. These days, it is a surprising find. 

The only Pastry Chef I’ve come across who did this traditional dish justice was at the Pullman, Putrajaya. A lovely young lad, who moved with the quiet grace and assurance which just told one that he’d succeed where others have failed. I’ll have to check with chirpy Harriet Hoong at the property to see if he’s still there and see if he’ll do a live demo for me. Till then, bombs away!