This is sugar cane, in Thailand we cut it into short pieces, and chew on it as a sweet treat. Once the sweetness has been chewed out, we spit out the chewed up fibre. You can buy this in tins in Asian supermarkets.
Tamarind is a sour fruit and perfect for a sour-sweet sorbet. It takes wonderful, sour and sweet in the same mouthful. Now if only it wasn't brown, I could make it look sexy too!Ingredients 
30 gms Tamarind Pulp200 ml Water100 gms Sugar250 ml WaterPreparation1. Make the tamarind water by mixing tamarind pulp and 200ml water.2. Squeeze the pulp with your hands.3. Drain off the brown juice, this is your tamarind water, discard the pulp.4. Make a sugar syrup by mixing sugar and water in a pan, bring to the boil, then leave till cold.5. Mix the tamarind water and sugar syrup.6. Place in the freezer, after 2 hours take it out and break up any ice crystals, then finish the freezing.
I've also included a recipe for a bitter tamarind sauce, this makes a wonderful sour 'pickle like' sauce to serve with cold pork. It's better the prepare this pork the night before and let the pork marinade in the herb crust and liquid. The garlic will flavour it better if it's left to stand. For the sweetness I used sugar cane juice (the juice canned sugar cane is delivered in), but you can substitute any sweet juice, e.g. apple juice.Ingredients 1000 gms Pork Loin (Or similar roasting joint)50 gms Galangal10 gms Green Peppercorns10 lives Kaffir Lime Leaves10 Garlic Cloves10 gms Coriander Root4 Tablespoons Oyster Sauce200 ml Sugar Cane Juice or SimilarPreparation1. Clean the pork and place in a pan. Add the oyster sauce and palm juice, and bring to the boil. Spoon the liquid over the pork.2. Blend all the herb together and cover the top of the pork.3. Roast in the oven (with the liquid in the bottom of the roasting pan to keep it moist), 180 degrees celcius (quite a low roasting temperature so as not to burn the crust). To check if it's cooked, skewer it, and look at the juice that comes out.Tamarind Sauce Ingredients 120 ml Tablespoons Tamarind Water (Tamarind pulp mixed into water and sieved)50 gms Sugar 1 Teaspoon Salt120 ml Water1 Tablespoon Pickled ChilliesPreparation1. Boil the water, sugar and tamarind water.2. Add the salt, pickled chillies and stir until the sugar and salt have dissolved.3. Leave to cool. Serve cold.
Well you can buy sweetened soya milk in packets, but it's quite easy to make your own if you have yellow soya beans. I've photographed the milk sitting on dried soya beans, but if you can get fresh yellow or even green soya these both work well.Ingredients 100 gms Soya Beans500 ml Water70 SugarPreparation1. Rinse the soya beans to clean them. If the beans are dried, soak them overnight to soften them.2. Blend the soya beans with water and sieve the mixture in a fine cloth sieve to remove the skin and pulp, leaving yourself with a white liquid.3. Heat in a pan with soya and the sugar until boiling then simmer for 10 minutes.4. Serve chilled.