The Soup Queen

I got this recipe from somewhere but I cannot remember where but it was given as Maryann's recipe. So Maryann, thanks to you, I am sharing this soup recipe with everyone here. It's good for breastfeeding moms as papaya seems to increase lactation. Maryann’s Papaya Soup Ingredients 4 skinless chicken thighs 1 unripe hard papaya (about 400g) 4 shallots (sliced) 4 cloves garlic (sliced) 10 white peppercorns 1 piece of ginger (about 5cm long) 2 ½ litres of boiling water ½ Tbsp oil Salt to taste 1 Tbsp chopped Chinese parsley or spring onion (optional) Method 1. Clean and cut each chicken thighs into two. 2. Peel the papaya, take out the seeds and cut the fruit into big chunks. 3. Do not cut the ginger, but pound it slightly. 4. Heat the pot with oil, add ginger, fry for 3 minutes. Add shallots and garlic, fry for another minute, then add the chicken pieces and fry for 3 minutes. Add the boiling water. 5. Add the papaya and whole white peppercorns to the soup and boil it over low he...

The best part about blogging about soups is that I attract a lot of similar minded people and we become friends and then we start exchanging soup recipes and before you know it, we're diehard soup-lovers and soup recipe exchangers! Maybe SoupQueen should start a Soup Club! Any takers? Anyway, last week, I got a wonderful email from Grace Poon who lives in Australia. She was so kind to send me a soup recipe - a kidney tonic soup - to share with everyone here. It's taken from www.asiaone.com.sg (I believe it's always honest to credit back the source) and it's a soup for those suffering from backaches. According to the article accompanying the soup recipe, lower back pain is a result of not having enough Qi in the kidney and liver. Lower back pain could also result from stagnation of Qi in the blood. The kidney tonic soup suggested contains a main ingredient of Eucommia Bark or Duzhong. Duzhong, I read in a TCM book, is actually the name of the man who ate the herb and go...

Winter melon gives a sweetness to soups and can be a lovely warming soup on a cold night. The oysters lend the soup a delicate smokey taste too. Overall this is a soup which goes down well with many people. According to Acupuncture.com, winter melon clears heat, detoxifies, quenches thirst, relieves irritability, dispels dampness and is particularly effective in regulating blood sugar . Try this soup! Winter melon Soup With Chicken Feet 1 wedge of medium sized winter melon ("tung kwa") 5 dried oysters, soaked 1 whole chicken thigh (remove skin) 3 pairs chicken feet (chop off claws) 3 red dates (pitted) Salt to taste Chop the chicken thigh into bite-sized pieces. Chop chicken feet into 2 sections. Scald chicken thighs and chicken feet. Bring water to a boil. Put in all the ingredients into the pot. Boil furiously for 10 minutes and then cover pot to allow it to simmer for 2 hours. Season to taste with salt and sugar. This is how winter melon looks like - in case you want to ...

I was clearing off some old files of mine when I found this recipe! I have not tried it yet but I think it should be a delicious soup, as chicken and kei chi/medlar seeds/wolfberries lend a sweetness to the soup. Plus garlic too - I am a big user of garlic and I think this magic bulb does wonders to anything, be it soup or stew. If you do try it, let me know how it tastes like. This is a quick soup which can be ready in 30 minutes. Chicken Garlic Kei Chi Soup Ingredient 2 chicken thighs (400g) 100g garlic (peeled) 25g kei chi (wolfberries) 1 tsp salt 1 tsp soya sauce 1/2 tsp white pepper 1 Tbsp oil 1.2 litres boiling water 1 Tbsp chopped Chinese parsley Method 1. Remove excess fat from the chicken thighs, wash and pat dry with kitchen paper. Cut each thigh into four pieces. 2. Heat the wok with the oil, add garlic, stir-fry for a minute and add chicken and white pepper. Continue to stir-fry for 3 minutes. 3. Lastly add boiling water, kei chi, salt and soya sauce, cover and boil on medi...

I got this link from a reader of this blog. And what a great link it was... it was linked to a soup recipe and of course a book by someone called Grace Young. Grace's book is called "The Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen: Classic Family Recipes for Celebration and Healing". I hope to find this book at my local Borders Bookstore one of these days. It reads like one of those books I simply want in my TCM book collection! Here's a recipe called Dried Fig, Apple and Almond Soup taken from Grace's book. There's more information about this soup/tonic from the Global Gourmet website , a link given by a reader, TC! Dried Fig, Apple and Almond Soup by Grace Young According to Grace, this soup helps cure a persistent cough. I always think that it's better to take a tonic than to take cough medicine. A tonic tastes so much better too! 1/4 cup Chinese almonds (nom hung) 4 to 5 Chinese almonds (buck hung) 3 medium red Delicious apples, unpeeled 8 ounces pork loin, well tr...

Here's a quickie soup for those of you pressed for time (aren't we all? Sometimes I think we're like ants. Busy busy and busier!) Melon, Kei Chi and Carrot Soup is my invention but it tastes pretty good I must say! I made it two nights ago, after a long day at work. But the beauty of this soup is that it takes all of 30 minutes or less to boil and you can get instant soup (my other instant soup lifesaver is instant miso which I dump into hot water, add some tofu cubes and spring onions and I am ready to go. But that's another story for another day, ya?) Melon, Kei Chi and Carrot Soup You need: 1 small melon (you know the fat, green ones - peel skin and cube, with seeds on. Do not throw away the seeds.) 1/2 a carrot, cubed or sliced, up to you 1 tablespoon kei chi/wolfberries, soaked in water to hydrate 1/2 cup minced pork, marinated with 1 tsp cornflour, some salt and pepper and some sesame oil 1 liter water 2 cloves garlic, smashed with back of a cleaver 1 slice ginge...

I caught an interesting cooking show on TV last night. On Astro's Asian Food Channel (Channel 703), I watched a show on TCM. It was a Taiwanese programme where the host and hostess spoke in Mandarin and sometimes a smattering of Taiwan Hokkien. The show featured 3 recipes each segment, using TCM herbs with the herbalist host explaining about the uses of the specific herbs. Then the lady hostess would cook up a dish, usually a main course, using the herbs. While I am not very interested in making dishes like prawn balls with Chinese herbs (it seemed just too much work!), I liked the 2 other recipes they showed. One was a milk beverage with herbs (I can't recall what now). But the other one was easy. A tong sum and red date tea. Tong sum or dang shen is a mild herb which resembles a dry, gnarled twig the size of a finger. It is called the poor man's ginseng in some instances because it shares similar properties with the more expensive ginseng. Dang shen is actually a root wh...

I have not gone missing, in case you are wondering. Why no post from SoupQueen for such a long time? Well, I've been busy with clients' work and of course moving office. We just moved to a slightly bigger office space to accommodate our team. Even though it is moving up 2 floors, it seems like we're moving across the island. And we're still in the midst of rearranging furniture and etc. Anyway, today's post is just a quick update. I haven't been home much of the time hence the lack of soup activity in the kitchen! Oh how I miss my soup! So like TV, maybe I should recap some of my old soup recipes for some of you who have just been acquainted with me. (You know how TV sometimes cuts and splices different parts of programmes to make one new episode by itself? Well, this is probably similar. ) Let's see... for superquick soups, you can try Amaranth or Chinese Spinach Soup Szechuan Vegetable Soup And of course, there is this perennial favourite called ABC Soup ...

It helps to be nosey and poke around the wet market. Last week at the market, I saw some fresh cordyceps and asked the vegetable lady how to cook it. It ended up one of the more amazing discoveries - culminating in some soup of course! She told me that fresh cordyceps can be simmered with Solomon's seal/yuk chuk and Chinese sage/ tong sum for a delightfully tasty and nourishing soup. The best part about this Lip Sin wet market is that every stall is within walking distance. In no time I was at the Chinese herbalist - this youthful, ever-cheerful guy who sits in a tiny cubicle of herbs and stuff! He's practically hemmed in by his herbs. Anyway, I show him the fresh cordyceps I just bought and asked him what goes well with this herb. He gave me a packet of pre-packed herbs labeled "Jing Bu Tang" (Clearing and Nourishing Soup). When I got home, I got right into action. And the end result was good. The soup was flavourful and clear, and best of all, it healed my coughing!...

This recipe is thanks to Erina who saw me having a coughing fit yesterday and recommended that I try her mother-in-law's recipe. She said her son had been coughing too and after drinking this concoction 3 times a week, he had been cured. For this cough cure, you will need some slices of American Ginseng and 3-4 dried honey dates . These go into a pot with 2 bowls of water. Simmer until only half the water remains. This could probably take 20 minutes or so. Drink warm. American Ginseng (panax quinquefolius) or Pao Sum (in Mandarin) is one of the milder ginsengs from the ginseng family. It is milder because it is yin or cooling in nature. It was first discovered by the Jesuit priests in Canada around the 18th century. This root herb was shipped in massive quantities to China - it was a valuable export in the 19th century. Hence the name American Ginseng because it really comes from America. The taste of American Ginseng is sweet and slightly bitter but is highly suitable for the Hear...

OK, this isn't really a soup. It's more of a dish than a soup but I want to share this recipe with everyone because my first time trying this recipe was truly a success. And if I can cook this dish, so can you. "Chai boey" is a Hokkien term - we Cantonese call it 'choy mei' or 'leftover vegetable' (literal translation). It's a tangy, salty, sour dish of mustard greens boiled with meat (usually roasted pork/ roast duck). It's great on its own and even better eaten with rice. In the olden days, it's called 'chai boey' because people really used leftovers in this dish. My aunt makes this dish each Chinese New Year eve, once we're done with the reunion dinner. In our reunion dinner, we'd have lots of leftover dishes - roast meats, minced pork balls, etc. One should have leftovers for Chinese New Year as this signifies that we would have "plenty" for the coming year. It's symbolic most times. For the chai boey dish,...

I've written about using fresh wai san in porridge , thanks to the recipe passed on to me by my regular vegetable-seller in the Lip Sin wet market. A couple of weeks ago, I chanced upon fresh wai san again in the market and bought it for cooking porridge. But the wai san was huge, so I used up only half. The vegetable-seller told me I could keep the other half of the wai san in the fridge for a week or so, provided I wrapped it up in newspaper. One of those days while rummaging through my fridge for something to cook, I saw the wai san again and this time decided to try it in a soup. I had read somewhere (forgotten where now...tsk tsk, must be old age) that it is good as a soup too. The recipe is simple (ah, I am a big proponent of simple recipes, ya) and just needs 3 major ingredients: freshly peeled and sliced wai san, 4-6 de-seeded dried red dates and about 400 gm of pork ribs, blanched. As usual, bring a pot of water to boil. Put all 3 ingredients into pot; bring to a rolling b...

I got this soup recipe from The Star newspaper a couple of months ago. Haven't had time to make this soup but since it's so easy, I thought I'd share this with all of you. Maybe you can try it and see how it goes! I've always enjoyed vegetarian soups at Buddhist temples. There's one near my home and the soups are often clear and sweet! Vegetarian Lotus Soup 1 whole lotus root or 200gm, washed, peeled and sliced thick 1 cup peanuts , soaked and rinsed 5 red dates , seeded 2-3 honey dates 50gm vegetarian chicken 1.5 liters of water salt to taste Combine all ingredients in a pott and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 2 hours. Add salt after 2 hours of simmering and serve hot.

I was at my favourite TCM shop (Veng Tatt Soon @ Campbell Street, Penang) two days ago to pick up some bee pollen for myself when I saw this packet of tea called Gynostemma pentaphyllum. Nic and I were looking to buy some nice Chinese tea, maybe Ti Kuan Yin, as our tea supply was running low and we were sick and tired of our regular brand. The shop assistant told us that this Gynostemma tea (it looks like tea) is good for health. I like the honesty of the owners and shop people at Veng Tatt Soon (they also have a branch at Jalan Paya Terubong, Air Itam but I usually frequent this corner shop at Campbell Street) and I decided, sure, why not try it? At RM10 for 70gm, it wasn't very expensive. Of course, I am often curious and when I got back, I did an internet search on what this gynostemma herb is about. What a surprise to find out that this herb is actually very beneficial for health - particularly for stress, cholesterol, blood pressure, immunity, antioxidant properties, the list ...

Here's a peek at some of my favourite herb books on my bursting bookshelves! Many of these books can be bought or sourced from any good bookstore like Borders, Popular, Kinokuniya and MPH. I refer to these books a lot as they're full of information and one read cannot glean them all. Books by DK ( www.dk.com ) or Dorling Kindersley are fantastic - they come with colour photos and that's always helpful when I am trying to figure out which herb is which! Slowly build up your books on TCM and herbs as there are plenty out there. Get them with hardcover if you can - they're sturdier and last longer because you will be referring to them a lot in your study of herbs off and on. I started collecting these books about 5 years ago and am still slowly building up a collection. I cross-refer when I am unsure (and refer online when I am really stumped!). But books, unlike websites, can be picked up anytime for a quick perusal. Switching on my laptop takes much longer! If you have ...

I know this is not a soup BUT it does taste so good and takes less than 30 minutes to prepare. It has a bit of a gravy that goes well with plain rice. White radish is a versatile root vegetable. You probably have eaten radish in its other forms in Japanese or Korean cuisine. In Korean food, you probably have eaten radish as a spicy kimchi. In Japanese cuisine, you would have been familiar with "daikon" used in Japanese stews or even as a white shredded pile of mush you usually add to the dipping sauce for tempura. But a word of caution, if you have taken herbal soups such as ginseng a few hours before, you should NOT take anything (soup or otherwise) that is cooked with white radish. White radish detoxes the body of all the goodness that you have just eaten. I once heard that if you have food poisoning, taking white radish is good as it helps flushes out the unwanted from your body. Anyway, white radish is a vegetable you should eat if you want a clear complexion. Perhaps tha...

This is one of my favourite blood tonics! I have grown up with this herb because my mom used to boil dong quai for my sisters and me especially when our menses are over. Mom used to emphasise that women benefit most from this herbal soup/tonic. Now that I've married and left home, I still make this dong quai tonic for myself each month. Not many people like the smell of dong quai - but I do. The smell of dong quai simmering in the slow cooker for a few hours is out of this world. Again, I am one of the many odd ones out. Many people I know will run at the smell of chinese herbs but not me. I enjoy going into Chinese medicine shops, and the smell of herbs is divine! Dong quai is really a woman's herb because it helps to correct women's problems such as painful periods, irregular periods, PMS, hormonal imbalance, anaemia, fatigue, high blood pressure, postpartum conditions and menopausal symptoms. If you're a woman and feeling blah most of the time, you should ...

What do you do when you're too tired to cook dinner? Sometimes I resort to making porridge or congee. Porridge is filling yet nutritious and with a rice cooker, you can cook porridge in 1 hour or less. This time, I will show you how to cook a simple chicken porridge with 3 basic ingredients - chicken, dried scallops and rice. I use chicken wings because I like the texture and softness of chicken wings but you can use any part of the chicken you like. Chop the chicken meat into fairly large pieces. Set aside. Wash rice as if you are going to cook rice. A cup of rice is enough for two persons. Put rice into your rice cooker and add 3 times the water. More water is better than less. Your porridge will thicken as it sets. Into this rice + water mix, add chicken. Add 3 large dried scallops (pre-soak in water to soften). Break up the scallops gently. That's it. Place the lid on the cooker (do not cover tightly or your porridge will boil over! And what a mess that will be) and switch...

It's often difficult to find soups which cater specifically for vegetarians as most Chinese TCM soups do contain some meat or other. I got this recipe from Bao Ma, that famous Taiwanese mother of Ah Bao (Eric Tsang's bubbly daughter who is a TV host in Taiwan). A few years ago, Ah Bao and her mum (or Mrs Eric Tsang) did a cooking show over TV - all about soups! How I loved that show. I was inspired to be more kitchen-friendly after viewing those episodes. Bao Ma used to recommend super simple soup recipes which I often scribbled down, and that's how I brushed up on my Mandarin. I never went to a Chinese school (which is often a big regret) but I have always felt at home with Mandarin. I do speak the language though, and am able to read basic Mandarin. With Bao Ma's how to make soup TV series, it was two favourite passions rolled into one: I got to learn how to make soups and learnt how proper Mandarin is spoken. As well as what certain herbs were named in Chinese. Well,...

It's been a busy month for me. Every other day, I've had to work on some client's project or go out and discuss something or another. That's why the SoupQueen has been missing from the kitchen and as such, not many soups to recommend! Anyway, I came across a website which talks about TCM and TCM herbs. I'm always on the lookout for good herb glossaries because herbs are just wonderful for health. And always good for soups. This website which I came across is called Sacred Lotus Arts Traditional Chinese Medicine. I was looking for a reason why I am spotting after my menses. Yep, there is a term for this. It's called Metrorrhagia. Anyway, one search led to another and that's how I ended up at the Sacred Lotus website which is truly a gem of a find. It has herbs plus photos of herbs. I always believe photos are always better than illustrations. And the herbs are in Pinyin too so it's easy to find the herb you want. If you like, you can search using Latin or...

I'm a big believer in flower teas - you know, teas made from real flowers. Of course, the easiest is chrysanthemum tea . But lately, there's been much interest about other flowers such as rose, lavender, jasmine, rosemary, sweet osmanthus and globe amaranth which can be made into healthy teas. Plus the fact that it helps with detoxing and beautification is another reason why women like me buy into these teas! Personally I've enjoyed drinking rose tea . Just add a few dried roses into a mug, pour in freshly boiled hot water and let it steep for 10 minutes. Instant rose tea. Add some honey if you want it sweet. Roses naturally add to women's health because it relieves menstrual pains, invigorates the blood and helps rid one of bruises. Rose is essentially the woman's flower! Globe amaranth tea is also easy to brew. Buy dried globe amaranth (those purple heads of flowers in any good tea shop) and add to a mug of hot water with a slice of dried haw, some cubes of rock ...

Amaranth or Chinese spinach is a leafy vegetable streaked with red. If you make a soup with amaranth, your soup will look red! But don’t worry. The colour is all natural and is really good for your health. I always remember this soup because as a child, I’ve often been persuaded to drink it so that I would grow strong like Popeye the Sailor Man! Only when I grew up that I realized Popeye’s spinach and Chinese spinach were totally different! Amaranth is called ‘een choy’ in Cantonese or ‘bayam’ in Malay. It is good for women particularly as it contains iron for blood-building and folic acid for women who intend to get pregnant. But amaranth like spinach contains oxalic acid too so it may not be too suitable for those who cannot digest too much oxalic acid. According to Wikipedia, the high content of oxalic acid prevents calcium absorption and this vegetable should not be taken by people with kidney problems, gout or rheumatoid arthritis. Reheating this vegetable is also not encouraged b...

Today I looked up a recipe for nourishing lungs and found this simple dessert soup. I’ve been feeling out of sorts for the past two days, itchy throat, blocked and stuffed nose and sniffles all about. These symptoms indicate that my lungs were weak and if you have problems with your lungs, you will also have constipation because the nose, lungs and large intestine are interconnected, according to Traditional Chinese Medicine. You can use acupressure to relieve the stuffed nose, like I did. Press with your fingers both sides of your nose, on your cheeks. You can also press on the ‘third eye’, the area between your eye brows. Or press both sides of your nostrils, near your eye area. These will help clear your sinus a bit or at least allow you to breathe easier. The other point is behind your head, near your ears. Feel for a soft spot on both your left and right and press to get rid of the stuffy nose. You can also massage your jawline to stimulate the lymph glands so they can work overti...

This is a nourishing tea/sweet dessert soup recipe I picked up from a recipe book which I bought a few weeks ago. It’s decidedly simple and easy to make – that’s why it makes a great introduction to 2007 – it is in fact the first post of the year. I would call this a nourishing drink because the three main ingredients (see title above) are good for building blood, regenerating Qi and beneficial to the eyes. This can be served on its own, as an afternoon drink (please serve it warm) or after a lovely dinner to clear the palate. Here’s how you make this tea/sweet soup which serves 4 persons easily: Red Dates, Longan and Medlar Seeds Tea * 8 large red dates, pitted * 2 tablespoons of medlar seeds/boxthorn seeds, rinsed and soaked in water for 10 minutes and then drained * 10 dried longans, washed * 4-6 small cubes of rock sugar * 1 liter of water Method: Bring a liter of water to boil in a pot. Add all ingredients and let it come back to a boil f...