The Soup Queen

If you live in Asia, you would know what the sapodilla fruit or ciku fruit looks and tastes like. It is very sweet when ripe but it is also a haven for fruit worms. Many people dislike eating this as they worry they will accidentally eat the tiny white worms too! Besides eating them as they are, you can make a pretty easy soup with the sapodilla fruit. This soup helps clear the lungs. All you need are: 4 ripe ciku, de-skinned 1 medium papaya, peeled and sliced in chunks 2 tablespoons medlar seeds or boxthorn fruit, washed 4 candied dates, wash lean pork (blanch) In a pot, bring 1.5 liters to boil. Add all the above ingredients and bring to a boil for 10 minutes. Cover pot, lower heat and simmer for 2 hours. Season to taste with 2-3 teaspoons salt. Serve.

This is a simple cordycep soup. Cordyceps or dong chong xia chao is also called caterpillar fungus. As a sweet and warm herb, it benefits largely the kidney and lung. That's why this soup is great for nourishing the lung and strengthening kidney and of course, helps with people who suffer from coughs. For this soup, I bought a ready packet of premix herbs from the herbalist for RM4. Inside the packet were dried cordyceps, red dates, medlar seeds, yuk chuk/solomon's seal and Dan Shen (chinese sage). As usual, bring a pot of water to boil. Again this is roughly 6 fairly large bowls of water or 1.5 liters. When boiling, add blanched pork or chicken together with the herbs and boil on high for 10 minutes, uncovered. Then cover the pot tightly and lower fire completely to a mere bubble and let it simmer for 2 hours. Season to taste after 2 hours with 2 teaspoons good quality salt (I use Himalayan salt). Let it rest for 30 minutes before serving warm. This is a deliciously nourishing...

I got this link from a reader of this blog. And what a great link it was... it was linked to a soup recipe and of course a book by someone called Grace Young. Grace's book is called "The Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen: Classic Family Recipes for Celebration and Healing". I hope to find this book at my local Borders Bookstore one of these days. It reads like one of those books I simply want in my TCM book collection! Here's a recipe called Dried Fig, Apple and Almond Soup taken from Grace's book. There's more information about this soup/tonic from the Global Gourmet website , a link given by a reader, TC! Dried Fig, Apple and Almond Soup by Grace Young According to Grace, this soup helps cure a persistent cough. I always think that it's better to take a tonic than to take cough medicine. A tonic tastes so much better too! 1/4 cup Chinese almonds (nom hung) 4 to 5 Chinese almonds (buck hung) 3 medium red Delicious apples, unpeeled 8 ounces pork loin, well tr...

It helps to be nosey and poke around the wet market. Last week at the market, I saw some fresh cordyceps and asked the vegetable lady how to cook it. It ended up one of the more amazing discoveries - culminating in some soup of course! She told me that fresh cordyceps can be simmered with Solomon's seal/yuk chuk and Chinese sage/ tong sum for a delightfully tasty and nourishing soup. The best part about this Lip Sin wet market is that every stall is within walking distance. In no time I was at the Chinese herbalist - this youthful, ever-cheerful guy who sits in a tiny cubicle of herbs and stuff! He's practically hemmed in by his herbs. Anyway, I show him the fresh cordyceps I just bought and asked him what goes well with this herb. He gave me a packet of pre-packed herbs labeled "Jing Bu Tang" (Clearing and Nourishing Soup). When I got home, I got right into action. And the end result was good. The soup was flavourful and clear, and best of all, it healed my coughing!...