The Soup Queen

Clockwise, from top: fresh corn, dang shen, goji berries,& kudzu root Quite an intriguing title for today's post right? I was introduced to this soup by the auntie in the Lip Sin market. She's a regular grandma in her 60s but she operates a vegetable stall in the market and she's often my source of recipes, particularly soups. Last week, she introduced me to fresh kudzu. See that blob above in the photo that looks like a turnip or "bangkuang"? She told me it's called "fen kok" in Cantonese. I have never come across it before. I am particularly excited when I come across ingredients I've never used. This was no different. So I asked her what I could do with this "fen kok". She told me that it's good for boiling soups. She even told me that I should boil "fen kok" with some fresh corn, goji berries and "tong sum" (Cantonese) or "dan shen" (Chinese sage or salvia miltiorrhiza) and of cour...

Happy New Year everyone! I took a long break for Christmas and finally we all survived the Mayan prophecy but Nic asks in an almost sinister manner - How do you know if we're not all walking zombies? What if we all died in our sleep on 21 Dec and we're now in an alternate universe but we are unaware of it? My retort to that is: if I were a zombie, I'm still a zombie with my old personality - that is, I still want to look good, age well and eat well. Ah so. But this zombie has promised to write about my other discovery on getting hair to become black. See, vain zombie this is! Of course besides dyeing my hair with henna (something which my hair stylist, Desmond absolutely does not like but hey, it's my hair OK and my brain and I certainly don't want chemicals seeping into my brain cells for an hour), I have attempted to adjust my diet to include more hair-friendly ingredients. Just the other day when I was back home in Banting, my 34 year old sister wa...