Fresh Cordycep, Medlar Seeds & Honey Date Soup

I bought some fresh cordyceps from the Lip Sin market just last Friday and asked the vegetable lady how to cook it.

I remember clearly the last time I cooked this fresh cordyceps - I went to the Chinese herbalist and got a packet of prepacked herbs to add to the fresh cordyceps. It made a lovely soup.

This time though I wanted to try something else. My vegetable lady told me that it's also good to boil fresh cordyceps with medlar seeds/wolfberry seeds and honey dates.

And I, being the adventurous sort, never say no to a new soup recipe. Yum!

Luckily I had some honey dates in my fridge as well as some leftover medlar seeds. (It's good to stock up on herbs - buy a little of everything and store in jars in the fridge. On any good day, I have dang gui, red dates, honey dates, tao ren, medlar seeds and dried longan which I can use to make anything from soup to sweet dessert! It's my stockpile of Chinese herbs... which is very important, well to me anyway!)

I also had some chicken feet, besides the basic pork bones so I blanched them too.

In a pot of boiling water, add the blanched pork bones and chicken feet together with some fresh cordyceps, a handful of medlar seeds (soaked to re-hydrate) and 3 honey dates. Someone once asked me how much of water is needed for soups and I go for at least 1.5 liters of water. This feeds me and my husband comfortably for 2 meals.

Clockwise from top: honey dates, medlar seeds & fresh cordyceps

Boil on high for 10 minutes, uncovered. Then cover with lid, turn heat down to very low and simmer for 2 hours. Season to taste with salt when it is almost done. Let the soup "sit" to develop flavour for about an hour before you serve. I usually boil the soup around mid-afternoon, 4pm or so and once it's ready by 6pm, I let it 'rest' until 7pm before dinner is served.

In some soups, I add a teaspoon of sugar to balance the saltiness but in this soup, I refrain because the honey dates lend a natural sweetness. Honey dates are sweet so don't go adding anything but salt.

If you cook soups with chicken feet (which is really a favourite with me), remember to scoop off the oil which floats to the top of the soup. Chicken feet are good for the skin as it contains collagen but it is also very oily.

I'll post another recipe on how to cook chicken feet as a main dish later on.... as you can see, I am a big fan of chicken feet (which are really cheap and nutritious). I'm Cantonese, what can I say! I like all those things which people look upon with horror such as pig liver, pig blood, duck blood, chicken feet, chicken intestines, duck tongues and etc. OK, maybe I'm old school but I do so love the dracula stuff!

Until then, try out this soup and let me know if you like it.

Tong Sum and Red Date Tea

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

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The Soup Queen

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