The Soup Queen

I hope you can help me. I am completely stumped. My friend gave me a bunch of this and calls it spinach. It grows wild in her garden. She said she planted it after a lady in a vegetarian restaurant gave it to her. Apparently it is good for health. So my friend gives this to me and tells me that it can be used like spinach. I made a soup out of the leaves, boiling it with some ikan bilis. It tasted lovely. Now that problem is, I don't know what it is or what it's called. Do leave a comment if you know what it is.

I am a big fan of the Buddhist Tzu-Chi Merit Society in Penang. I think they do a fantastic job of serving the community (especially helping underprivileged dialysis patients who can't afford to visit regular hospitals for dialysis treatments, the elderly and such). In my taman, I love the fact that they're just around the corner with their recycling centre. I drop off my recyclables every week or so and I know that the money they get from selling paper, plastic and tins go toward funding the dialysis centres that they operate in Penang. The only thing which I don't quite understand is that they recycle books. If you sent them a bunch of books, they would never sell the books as reading materials. They would tear the books up and sell the paper for recycling. Once I volunteered with them in my taman. They asked me to sort out the different types of paper - among them were old but readable books. I saw a book that I wanted and I even asked if I could pay for the boo...

Remember my last post on the herb I found while visiting Balik Pulau? Well, here's more about the herb! (For more details, read this. Mugwort is terribly useful! ) A week ago, my neighbour gave me a plastic bag full of Ai Ye or Mugwort. Yes, the very same neighbour who saw me planting the Ai Ye herb in my garden. The very same one who told me the herb grows wild and aplenty in her mom-in-law's garden in Gelugur (why is it that moms-in-law often grow this herb in their garden?) So here's how the herb looks like. It may look like a lot but once you fry it up with eggs, it shrinks. I just plucked off the leaves. The stems I stuck them into a pot and they seem to be growing. As my husband says, these are fast-growing weeds and they grow everywhere. (Update: Maybe it's the weather but my Ai Ye leaves aren't growing as fast as it should be! I just plucked off some and fried them up with eggs only once but the plant is still growing too slowly for my liking. ...

Ai Ye leaves or mugwort (artemisia vulgaris) One of the herbs which I liked a lot is this herb - Artemisia Vulgaris. However I didn't know its name before this. I got to know this herb thanks to my mother-in-law. Whenever we visit her in Kuching, I'd go looking at her garden and she'd have these patch of plants in the garden. She used to call them "hnia" which I think is the name of the herb in Hokkien dialect.  Now this "hnia" has a peculiar taste which is an acquired taste. You either like it or you hate it. My mom-in-law would pluck the young leaves of this plant and fry them up with egg,  in an omelette. She would serve this with the other dishes at lunch or dinner. The downside to this herb was that it made one release gas (a.k.a fart!).  She said it was good for getting rid of "wind" and the herb was good for women.  I always wanted to bring some of the herb home to plant in my own garden BUT my husband detested the her...

One of the best things I love about Hong Kong is their herbal drinks. There's a variety of them sold almost everywhere you go. Am actually blogging this from our rented apartment in Jordan (thank God for the high speed wifi) so this is definitely a first for me - blogging on the go, that is. I got a fever two days before I got on the plane to HK and I was so worried I would literally freak out in the plane for the 4 hours of flight. Thankfully Ho Yan Hor saved me and i actually was quite OK for travel except that my throat was sore. It's my 2nd day in HK and I decided that I had to drink something to cool down my heaty body. This brand of herbal drinks is easy to find at MTR stations across HK. At HK$24 it's not exactly cheap but it is great for people like me.  This one is made of lotus leaf, winter melon and coix seeds and i had mine warm. It clears heat and relieves summer heat.  All i want is to have my throat back to normal again so...

I have been missing in action for sometime. I actually have a bunch of drafts waiting to be edited and posted up but things have gotten super busy plus I have had a nice little TCM adventure two weeks ago. It involved an Australian artist, Little India, a young TCM herbalist who is a woman no less (and one who speaks English) and a 200+ year old legacy from Penang's oldest medical halls (started in 1796!). But that is one story that must be told properly - not in some sloppy way so I shall have to keep you in suspense just a little longer. ;-) Anyway, I have not abandoned this blog. In fact, I missed making soups. Now that I have a slow cooker given to me by a Canadian friend who was leaving Penang for Newfoundland, I have found soup-making to be lots easier! I no longer have to watch the stove like an eagle (and worried that the wind from the kitchen window will blow out my stove flames). I no longer have to be at home when I am making soup. All I need to do is rinse th...

If you read this blog long enough, you know I love convenience. Maybe because I am lazy. I like to think that I like shortcuts to health. Anyway, for the past 4 months I have been taking this product that I feel has been doing me good, despite its hefty price tag.  But first, a little introduction is in order.  It's a product from Taiwan called Bing Han Refined Ginseng Powder and it's made from panax ginseng.  Bing Han Ginseng Powder from Taiwan It is water soluble. Which means I can dissolve it in water and drink it up. In my books, it's always a good thing right? Sheer convenience.  I had heard of the miraculous things people have said about ginseng. When my late grandmother was alive, she was given Korean ginseng and her white hair started turning black!  Anyway, Chinese folks love their ginseng. It's a well-known fact. I had a friend who used to drink ginseng soups when she was pregnant. Her two children do have beautiful skin!...

This definitely isn't a soup. It's a stew but it's such a robust, hearty stew that I have to share it with you. First of all, eating mutton was not part of my childhood. My mom never cooked mutton, noting that mutton was tough and had a gamey sort of smell.  When I was a teenager, I got it into my head that I won't eat mutton or beef. (Errr....to hell with teen ideals...I happily eat both beef and mutton now. I have a long way to go to be a vegetarian!) Mutton Stew with Carrots and Onions As I grew older, I started trying out all types of cuisine and I most loved Indian mutton curry especially mutton varuval. Oh how I loved my mutton varuval. It was spicy and yummy and all the things the cardiologists never want you to eat. When I was growing up, I always had cold feet especially if it was a week before my menstruation. This was part and parcel of PMS together with awful headaches, bloatedness and breast tenderness. Yes, I had the whole bloody works of ...

Sorry for the lack of posts. It's not that I have not been making soups but life and business intervened. Business, clients, family, life.  Whenever I get tired or bored, I'd head to the kitchen. I'll try a new recipe and a lot of people find cooking tedious (especially in my case when it's just my husband and me). Some people ask me, "Isn't it far easier to head out to the hawker stalls or a coffeeshop and get dinner over and done with?"  After all, I am living in Penang. The island with the most lipsmackingly delicious street food.  I admit that cooking small portions can be tedious BUT as I said, cooking and tinkering in the kitchen is my escape from a world that gets too hectic (at least for me).  Cooking and gardening are my escapes.  So this blog post is inspired by what's growing in my tiny patch of garden.  I've been growing serai or lemongrass in a pot in my garden. It's been thriving happily. But at times...

You know how it is with herbs. You don't really pay attention to it until you need it. Which is precisely what happened. Nic was complaining of a dull ache near his heart a few weeks ago. He was worried, I could see. After all, having a heart problem is no laughing matter. He is 40 years old but he has been physically fit most of his life. In fact, I am the one with the aches and pains. I am the one with knots in my shoulders (from hunching over the laptop no less) and need my fortnightly reflexology or Thai body massage sessions. He attributes his good health to cod liver oil which he took as a kid. This is not the first time I heard of the cod liver oil theory. I had heard it before from my ex-boss about a decade ago (that was when I was still working for others). He said the same thing. He said his daughters never had a cold or flu after taking cod liver oil. Nic is not a believer in Western medicine. He thinks it's a load of crock especially when doctors these da...

Ho Yan Hor Gold Herbal Tea ...the tea I take on my travels!  Here's one of those quick Chinese herbal remedies that I always carry around with me, especially if I am going to go on a trip. It's Ho Yan Hor Herbal Tea. Unlike some bloggers who are paid to tout the benefits of a certain product (and review the product but say all sorts of super nice things about the product), I hereby declare that I am not one of them. I don't know any of the directors of this company, I am in no way linked to them and I am not getting any commission for spreading the good word about their herbal teas. I am writing as an avid drinker of their Chinese herbal teas. While most people will take flu medicine, Panadol and all matter of tablets and pills on a trip, I will bring along a few packets of this tea. Travelling (even domestic travel) can take a toll on the body. Sometimes you drink less water, eat more (or shall I say, gorge more since everything looks fabulously delicious w...

I was away for a while because my paternal grandmother passed away on 2 February. We were busy with the funeral a week before Chinese New Year. Technically speaking, this year I am not really allowed to celebrate the Lunar New Year or give angpows. Of course the funeral director says that as a grand-daughter who has married, I am "following" my husband so I am allowed to celebrate. I couldn't. So it was a low-key Lunar New Year for me. You know how it is when someone you love passes away. Who would be in the mood to celebrate? My grandma was all of 95 and had been rather sickly, refusing to eat. My aunts were perplexed. They finally resorted to using a syringe to feed her porridge. She had been bedridden for sometime now but we always thought, nah, Grandma will always be around. She couldn't recognize anyone - not her children or her grandchildren - but she was always that unifying force, someone who made us all return to the big old house again a...

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...

This isn't a slow simmered soup that takes 2 hours on the stove. No.  This is a quick 20 minutes soup that you can make on days when you want something nourishing and you just got home from work and you're too damn tired to call for take-out.  This is my go-to soup that's nutritious and flavourful. Packed with only 3 good ingredients - tofu, bittergourd and minced pork.  You can even just cook some rice (in the rice cooker) while you make this soup. Once the rice is done, so's your tofu soup.  Here's how you do it.  1 packet of soft tofu, cut into cubes 1/2 cup minced pork/chicken - marinate with some salt, pepper, cornstarch and sesame oil  1/2 bittergourd, sliced thinly* some chopped garlic spring onions to garnish salt & pepper to taste 800 ml water  Heat up some 2 tablespoons oil in a pot. Add garlic. Stir until it browns. Add water. Cover and bring it to a boil. Once it is boiling, drop t...

You would have seen this in most Chinese shops. It's a packet of dried ingredients made up of roots and twigs. Actually it is sugar cane. Dried sugar cane with an assortment of ingredients to make a cooling herbal tea. It's called Cane & Arrow Root Stock.  The package contains 3 ingredients (see photo below) - sugar cane, carrot and arrow root .  All you have to do is put the contents of this packet into a pot of water, say 1 liter. Boil on low fire for 20 minutes. Then add rock sugar to taste. It's a traditional herbal tea for cooling down the body on hot summer days!  Arrow root is the white slices, the carrot is the amber coloured stuff on the top while the rest are just sugar cane. What's your favourite herbal tea? 

Here are some new type of fruits I bought in the supermarket the other day. They're called Chinese Winter Dates. I didn't know much about them until a friend told me they're lovely and crunchy. When I saw them in the supermarket, I decided I ought to try them out.  Here's how they look like. Don't look very appealing right? All yellow and brown. They're mildly sweet and crunchy though. Like an apple. This is how it looks on the inside. The flesh is white with a seed in the middle.  Actually they're dates.  Like the regular dried red dates.  It's just that these are fresh dates which have yet to wrinkle up and dry out.  They're mostly from Shandong and available from October to December (hence their "winter" status). It's supposed to be the "rarest fruit in the world" but don't take it too seriously. I think Chinese exporters tend to make big claims.  There's very little inf...