Coconut & Pineapple Tapioca

📝 Ingredients

• 90 g small tapioca pearls (seed tapioca)
• 200 ml full-fat coconut milk (½ of a 400 ml tin)
• 500 ml plain unsweetened soya drink
• 2 tbsp maple syrup
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 pinch of salt
• ½ fresh pineapple (about 300 g flesh)
• 1 lime (zest and juice)
• 6 fresh mint leaves

🍴 Utensils

• Heavy-bottomed saucepan
• Whisk
• Wooden spoon
• 3 jars or glass pots with lids
• Chopping board and knife
• Fine grater

📖 Steps

1. Pour the coconut milk, soya drink and salt into a heavy-based saucepan. Heat over a medium heat, stirring, until it just starts to simmer, without letting it boil hard: soya drink catches and boils over quickly.
2. Sprinkle in the tapioca pearls while whisking to avoid lumps, then turn the heat down to low. Cook for 15 to 20 min, stirring every 2 min with a wooden spoon and scraping the bottom well, where the pearls tend to stick.
3. Check they are cooked: the pearls should be translucent with no white dot in the centre, and the mixture should coat the spoon like custard. If there are still white dots, cook for 3 to 5 min longer. It will thicken a lot more as it cools.
4. Off the heat, stir in the maple syrup and vanilla, then keep stirring for 1 more min to let the steam escape. Divide straight away between the 3 jars while the mixture is still runny: once cold, it's hard to transfer.
5. Leave to cool for 15 min at room temperature, close the jars and put them in the fridge for at least 2 hours, ideally overnight. The tapioca then takes on a soft pudding texture and is best eaten well chilled.
6. Prepare the pineapple: cut off the top and base, remove the skin from top to bottom with a knife, take out any remaining brown eyes with the tip of the blade, then remove the fibrous core and cut the flesh into 1 cm dice.
7. Finely grate the lime zest (only the green part, the white pith is bitter), squeeze the juice and mix with the pineapple and the shredded mint leaves. Keep this mixture in a sealed container in the fridge.
8. When ready to eat, stir the tapioca with a spoon to loosen it, then top with the lime pineapple. Only add the pineapple at the last minute so it stays crunchy and doesn't make the cream soggy.