The Soup Queen

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 ...