Cendol — West Java, Indonesia

Cendol is a cold dessert built from short, worm-shaped noodles made of rice flour or mung bean starch, tinted green with pandan or suji leaf juice, and served in a mixture of coconut milk and palm sugar syrup over crushed ice. It belongs to a family of iced desserts found across Southeast Asia under related names, from bánh lọt in Vietnam to lot chong in Thailand. In West Java, cendol is sold from street carts and market stalls, often under the local name es cendol, and is drunk rather than eaten with a spoon in its simplest form. Bandung is often cited as a city where the drink is widely available, served in glasses or plastic cups for a quick refreshment in the tropical heat. The noodles are made by cooking rice flour and tapioca starch with pandan juice into a thick, glossy paste, which is then pressed through a perforated ladle directly into iced water; the cold water firms the strands into their short, blunt-ended shape. Coconut milk is poured over the drained noodles, and a syrup of melted palm sugar simmered with pandan leaves is added last, with crushed ice filling the rest of the glass. Recipes vary in the starch used for the noodles — some cooks favor mung bean starch for a firmer bite, others keep to rice flour alone — and in what accompanies the coconut milk, with grated young coconut, jackfruit, or durian sometimes added to the glass depending on the vendor and the season.