The Soup Queen

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...

This week I am going to talk about a Traditional Chinese Herb in the form of a root. We Cantonese call it “wai san” but it is also known as “shan yao ”. It is a root that is used in Traditional Chinese Medicine – dried white slices which are added to soups. It is also called Chinese yam, Japanese mountain yam and Korean yam ( Radix Dioscoreae Oppositae ) . The wai san that I usually know is in the form of dried slices which is not very tasty even though it has been boiled and simmered in soups. When I was in the wet market, I chanced upon the fresh version of wai san when I asked my vegetables-seller what this funny-looking root was. Here’s a little bit about this humble herb which actually is very good for the body. Wai san is an anti-ageing herb (that should be enough to get you scrambling to your nearest wet market in search of this root) and is particularly beneficial for the stomach, spleen and lungs. According to Alternative Healing http: //al ternativehealing.org/huai_...