Recipe: Cabbage Soup to warm the body and cleanse the heat

I have just discovered that cabbage has huge recovery properties in TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) context.

The benefits include:

1. Moisten the intestines and prevent constipation
2. Improve circulation and alleviate joint pain
3. Clear toxins and good for skin

I decided to cook this for family dinner:

Ingredients

• 1 head of chinese cabbage (some also call nappa cabbage) - torn to bite size pieces
• 1 chicken bones
• 1 head of dried cuttlefish
• 1-2 thumb of ginger, smashed
• Red dates, stoned
• 1 grasp of wolfberries (goji berries)

1. I prefer to tear the vege instead of cutting as tearing will maintain higher moisture content of the vegetables
2. Cover the chicken bones and cuttlefish with water and put to boil
3. Put in the red dates, ginger and cabbage
4. Once the soup came to boil, lower the temperature to let it simmer until the water reduce by 1/3
5. Switch to fire to high, put in salt to taste and wolfberries (If you put wolberries too early, it will turn sour)

The kids finished 2 big bowls full of vegetables. 

Satisfied

Recipe: 2 Dishes 1 Soup (2D1S)

Sometimes I do not have enough time in the morning to prepare for double-boiled or stewed soup. So I have to come up with variety of quick soups. This is one of those..

Easy Chinese Spinach Soup

Ingredients:

• A bunch of chinese spinach
• A grasp of dried anchovies
• A thumb of ginger, smashed
• A carrot
• 1-2 tofu
• A grasp of wolfberries

1. Put anchovies, ginger and carrot in 1 litre of water and bring to boil
2. Put in tofu
3. Once the carrot has soften, put in the vegetables stem first, followed by the leaves (so the leaves wont be too mushy)
4. Finally, put in the wolfberries and salt to taste 

Easy Peasy Steamed Minced Pork with Salted Egg

• Minced pork 150 gram or about 3/4 cup
• 1 salted egg

1. Mixed the meat and the egg
2. Steam on top of cooking rice

Easy Stir-fry Chives with Prawns

• A bunch of chives, dice/julienne (cut into small sizes like the picture)
• 10 prawns (as you like)
• A thumb of sliced ginger

1. Marinate the prawn with sugar and placed in fridge for half hour to make it crunchy.You can ignore this step if it is real fresh.
2. Fry ginger in minimum oil, dump in the prawn and the chives. Stir, stir, stir... Done!

Made in malaysia..

Rambutan... A fruit named after its hairy features (rambut stands for hair in Malay). It is real sweet that planting a tree in your garden means inviting red and black ants. These are red rambutans, there are also yellow rambutans. They are green in colour and turn red/yellow when the fruit is ripe for consumption.

Then we have Queen of Fruits - Manggis or Mangosteen in English. It is sweet sourish in taste and cooling in nature. Why queen you asked? You see.. durian is hailed as the king of fruits for its impactful taste and properties, but it is extremely hot in nature. Whenever there is a season for durian, you will find he is paired with the queen as mangosteen will help to balance up our body temperature.

Take care not to stain your clothes with the mangosteen purplish red juice, as it won't go off.

Health/Herbs : Tian Ma

Tian Ma is also called Dong Ma or Calm Wing Herb. It is sweet warm in nature. It expels wind, cures palpitations, and benefits the liver. Among the symptoms of wind are dizziness, nervous prostration and numbness of the limbs.

Living in hot and humid country like Malaysia, we tend to develop wind in the body. Now, I don't mean the normal bloating. In Chinese medicine, wind is one of the 6 main cause of illness. Sometimes when you go for massage, do you find certain part of your body gave out a certain tick inside, as if there is something hard within your body? Those are actually wind that can block our body's "qi" flow. Massage can help, or once in a while consume some wind expelling herb like this one.

Be careful as there are fake tian ma made of sweet potatoes. The best tian ma is big, yellowish white, firm and bright in colour. There should not be any cavity over the cut.

Suggested recipe: Tian Ma with spare ribs in green tea soup

1. Throw in 1-2 pieces of tian ma with 300g of spare ribs, 1 packet of long jing green tea, 3-8 dates, 1-2 tbsp jizi (or jujubes in English), 1-2 tbsp barley, and 3 slices of ginger.
2. Make sure all the ingredients are covered by water.
3. Cook over slow fire for 1-2 hours or cook using microwave at high power for 20-30 minutes.
4. Once done, add a little salt and wine to taste. Bon apetit!

Note:

The picture show other additional herb such as rose bud, chrysanthemum, and bamboo pith. Personal additions to expel wind and dampness, as a result of our hot and humid weather these days (all the rains and extremely hot sun).

Herbs - Chrysanthemum (Flos Chrysanthemi)

When we talk about chrysanthemum flowers, many people expected flat yellow flowers that easily distegrates when soaked with boiled water. Aha... That is because you have bought the lower quality type. They are cheap, no doubt, but they also become easily bland in taste after the 2nd round of boiling water. But this.... this is a very beautiful species. Beautiful in taste, in sight and in function.

The herb is chiefly produced in the provinces of Zhejiang, Anhui, Henan and Sichuan, collected when the flower is in full blossom, and dried in the shade for use.

Chinese medicine uses it in expelling wind, clearing away heat, calming the liver and improving acuity of vision. As the herb is slightly cold in nature and acts on the lung and liver channels, it suits our consumption best during the time of haze like now.

When you are buying them from the herbal store, make sure you emphasize for high quality chrysanthemum which should look like the picture below when it is dry.

And not like the one below:

When soaked in hot water, the flower will expand into a full yellow bloom. Isn't that beautiful..

Preparation for a honey chrysanthemum drinks:
1. Put 2-3 tablespoons of dried chrysanthemum into a 500ml pot.
2. Blanch the flowers with hot water and drained.
3. Pour in hot water and let it soak for 5-10 minutes.
4. Pour 3 teaspoons of honey.
5. To beautify your presentation, pour the drinks into a see-through glass and voila!