Bubur cha cha is a sweet, coconut creamy dessert/breakfast dish from the Malay Archipelago. It comprises the root tubers sweet potatoes (various colors), yam, tapioca (in the form of dough balls), pearled sago and banana, in pandan-leaf infused coconut cream liquid.



Here is how I made this batch:

Ingredients

One tuber of orange/yellow sweet potato
One tuber of purple sweet potato
One tuber yam
A handful (amount of your choosing) of sago pearls
About 100 g tapioca flour (or more if you like)
Some pandan leaves (or the essence if you cannot find them)
Red food coloring
Green food coloring (if you cannot find pandan leaves)
2 Bananas
Coconut cream extract (I find the Kara brand very satisfactory)
Sugar (brown; white; or palm) to taste


Method

Dice all the root tubers into small cubes.

Steam the cubes for about 15 minutes to cook/soften them.

Cut up some pandan leaves into small pieces and blend in a food blender with a little water.
Filter the resulting blend with a sieve. Set aside the filtered pandan juice/extract.

To the tapioca flour, slowly add hot water and form a pliable dough. Add just enough water for a solid but not sticky dough. Constantly flour the dough to prevent sticking. Divide the dough into two. Add food coloring/pandan leaf extract to color one portion red and the other green. Knead the dough to distribute the color evenly. Form the dough into dough balls of sizes of your choosing. Drop the balls into boiling water to cook them. Use the balls straight away or leave them in the water until needed.

In a saucepan, boil a good quantity of water and add the sago pearls. The amount of water should allow for very free movement of the pearls. Cook the pearls for at least 15 minutes if not more) until they are all translucent. Constantly stir the pan or else some pearls may stick to the bottom of the pan. When cooked either use the pearls straight away in the next step (or sieve them up and suspend them in cold water to prevent them from sticking to one another). Reserve the water used to cook the pearls as this should be slightly viscous from cooked starch flour from the pearls and can be used as a thickener for the liquid for the dish.

In a saucepan, place all the diced tubers with a little water, a couple of pandan leaves and heat the pan up.
Add the sago pearls.
Add the dough balls.
Add the coconut cream.
Continue heating and stirring.
Adjust the consistency of the liquid to your liking with water and/or the liquid from cooking the sago pearls.
Add your chosen sugar to taste.
Slice the two bananas into the saucepan . . . .
and now the dish is ready to serve.