Adventures with Tapioca in my American Kitchen: A Recipe

Nope, not a Tintin story, unfortunately.

The history of savory tapioca pearls in my American kitchen is marked with many disastrous and abandoned attempts, enough to make you want to throw in the towel and crawl into bed. In those early days, success was recalcitrant and fleeting.
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In the end, I realized there was no one method of getting the pearls to plump up in exactly the right way…. It was just a matter of knowing the consistency I wanted to achieve — perfectly seasoned, translucent pearls, moist but not mushy.

There is a madness to the method. The entire essay, with the recipe, is on the Aerogram: Hot Pearls of Flavor to Savor: Sabudana Kichdi