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I thought very little about sago other then enjoying them in these marvellous ways.  That is until I started doing some research on South East Asian Food history.  In various books, and travel accounts I read, sago kept popping up with increasing regularity.  My interest piqued, I delved further into this innocuous pearl of starch, and found a little sago saga to be told.

So it is once upon a time, in a land far far away in the Malay Archipelago, sago was eaten regularly as a staple in this land, until it was displaced by rice.  However it continued to be eaten many centuries ago in areas where rice was expensive or not available, such as Timor, the northern Moluccas, the Aru Islands, Buton and Selayar.  It came to be seen as food for the poor.  How sago was eaten and processed in Amboina, in the Moluccas in the 19^th century was described by Anna Forbes, the wife of a naturalist,

�Sago as they used it would be unrecognisable to you.  The first time I saw it was as we rowed up the bay of Amboina: the men were eating hard rust-coloured cakes, which seemed to me made of sawdust.  And such they in a sense are.  Unlike rice or barley, sago is not the fruit of a tiny stem, - it is the pith of the trunk of a great tree.  The tree is felled, the pith � a soft fibrous wood � is scraped out, then it is beaten fine, and laid in a trough with water to steep.  The water passes through a sieve into another trough, carrying with it the starch in the wood, and this settles at the bottom.  The sediment of sago in its first stage � a fine powder, which is at once packed into cylinder-like cases for export.  The neighbouring island of Ceram supplies most of the surrounding islands with their daily bread, and while we were at Paso boats frequently landed laden with this product.�[1]

Sago continues to be extracted from the sago palm or other palms which develops a starchy pith.  Not unlike Anna Forbes� description, the pearl sago is known to be produced from the grinded pith.  The processed starch from the pith is pressed through a sieve and dried on a hot surface, creating the white pellets of sago we are familiar with.

During the heydays of the East India trade, it was a product traded in the region, and was even considered a superior substance when it was first imported to Britain in the 18^th century.  It was added to soups and made into puddings and desserts, with its plainness relieved by the use of fruits.[2]  Yet its decline in popularity was steep, and it is now at best viewed as quixotic in the British kitchen.  Its gluey texture and plain flavours can repel those unused to it. 

Tips on cooking sago

The instruction for making Sago Gula Melaka is simple enough.  Most cookbooks will tell you to boil the sago, boil the coconut cream, melt the gula melaka into a syrup, chilled, combine and serve.  Sounds simple?  It is.  But it can be daunting if you have not used sago before.  Cooking sago can sometimes be a challenge, for it can turn out uncooked or burnt.   I had been through these trials of fire to finally arrive at the right method.

So here are the tips to get perfect sago each time

1)   Add lots of water into the pot.  With more water, the sago will not likely to be burnt.

2)   After you have added the sago into the boiling water, keep it on a low fire, and stir constantly.  Again this is to avoid the starch forming in the pot to be burnt.

3)   Boil the sago for about 10 minutes, till most of it is nearly translucent. Switch off the fire , put the lid on, and keep it standing for another 10 minutes, for the residual heat to cook the sago thoroughly.

4)    Cooked sago is completely translucent.

5)    To remove the excess starch, rinse the sago in smaller portions on a sieve with running tap water, stirring with your fingers, till the sago is glistening, and its roundness well-defined.