Gui Lin Gao

Have you ever eaten a turtle shell?

We were at dim sum one Sunday morning and I saw the table next to us receive an order of black jello. What was this black jello I asked my knowledgeable companions. "It's turtle shell," they said, "you'll like it."

I did, and I do, often. I love the stuff. It's really best at good dim sum restaurants, where they serve it fresh, in fine dishware. It's bitter stuff on its own, so they usually bring a few small bowls of honey and condensed milk and maybe some canned fruit to brighten up the dark black bitter jello. It's a popular summer time dessert, served chilled, and said to be good for the skin.

When I'm not at a restaurant, I often run down to the corner store to get pre-packaged turtle shell jello in a plastic bowl. They sell it for a little less than one USD. I take it as a hangover cure, although I don't know if anyone else does.

The taste reminds me of Coca-Cola. Is that their secret ingredient? Hmm... There are many varieties of guilingao. Most have medicinal herbs in the mix, which give it different flavors, and different medicinal properties.

If you think this stuff is weird, wait till I tell you what's in your regular old suburban American church potluck jello. The skin, tendons, skull, joints, hooves, and boiled bones of various animals. That's what we call gelatin. Get it? "GEL-a-tin" ... "JEL-lo". Gelatin is also used in marshmallows, sour cream, beer and wine filtering, and photographic paper. More here. So sorry if you didn't know that already, I probably just disappointed thousands of wine-loving vegan photographers out there!

Now here's the deal. Not all guilingao is made with tortoise shell. The cheaper stuff can be made from vegetable sources, and there's alternatives like grass jelly or agar-agar (a seaweed). But the medicinal attributes are different therein.

More on Guilingao (Gui Lin Gao)...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guilinggao