Sarim (dessert)

Sarim (Thai: ซ่าหริ่ม, pronounced [sâːrìm]; or ซาหริ่ม, pronounced [sāːrìm]) is a Thai dessert. It consists of colourful (usually pink and green) thin noodles made from mung bean flour in coconut milk and syrup, served cold with crushed ice.[1] The dish is mentioned in the Kap He Chom Khrueang Khao Wan poem of King Rama II (r. 1809 – 1824), though back then it was seasoned with patchouli rather than served with ice.[2]

Sarim, served with ice on top

With the 2020 Thai protests, the term salim (สลิ่ม), derived from sarim, came to be used in a political sense to refer to ultra-royalist, pro-military conservatives. For more than a decade, Thai society had been divided between "Yellow shirts" (conservatives) and "Red shirts" (progressives).[3] Then, Yellow shirt leaders—seeking to distance themselves from their association with their government's often violent repression—recast their effort as a "multi-colored movement", a makeover more representative of the "silent majority". As sarim, the dessert, comes in many colours, the term was applied to the now multi-coloured Yellow shirts.[4][5]