The Water Charged With Sago
Starch Passes On To A Trough, With A Depression In The Centre, Where The
Sediment
Is deposited, the surplus water trickling off by a shallow outlet.
When the trough is nearly full, the mass of
Starch, which has a slight
reddish tinge, is made into cylinders of about thirty pounds' weight, and
neatly covered with sago leaves, and in this state is sold as raw sago.
Boiled with water this forms a thick glutinous mass, with a rather
astringent taste, and is eaten with salt, limes, and chilies. Sago-bread is
made in large quantities, by baking it into cakes in a small clay oven
containing six or eight slits side by side, each about three-quarters of an
inch wide, and six or eight inches square. The raw sago is broken up, dried
in the sun, powdered, and finely sifted. The oven is heated over a clear
fire of embers, and is lightly filled with the sago powder. The openings
are then covered with a flat piece of sago bark, and in about five minutes
the cakes are turned out sufficiently baked. The hot cakes are very nice
with butter, and when made with the addition of a little sugar and grated
cocoa-nut are quite a delicacy. They are soft, and something like
corn-flour cakes, but have a slight characteristic flavour which is lost in
the refined sago we use in this country. When not wanted for immediate use,
they are dried for several days in the sun, and tied up in bundles of
twenty.
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