No-Frills Recipes ... cooking, baking & excerpts on travel

T his sweet soup or 'tong sui' of snow fungus, preserved dates, liquorice and ginseng roots  is a saviour these days because of the crazy hot weather.  Not only is this easy to prepare its taste is fabulous too.  A good idea to have a bowl of dessert to cool us down in this sweltering heat and this can be taken both warm or chilled.

H erbal Jelly ~ Gui Ling Ga o literally translated means 'Tortoise Jelly' is one of my family's favourite desserts.  It's much more economical to prepare this at home for you'll need to fork out between Rm 9 to Rm 11 for a bowl of this cooling dessert in any of those herbal tea outlets.  This soothing jelly, served chilled, is supposed to be able to help reduce our body heat, helps to get rid of toxins and is believed to be good for the skin thus culminating a healthier complexion.

This cooling and refreshing dessert soup is what we need to cool down our system in this current hot, humid, hazy weather........'Sea coconut with snow fungus sweet soup'.  This 'tong sui' or 'leong sui' is easy to prepare and also tastes fabulous both taken warm or chilled.

Lately, looks like the cough bug is in the air.  My neighbour has been coughing for quite a while, so are my friends and their children.  Lately my other half has been coughing too and instead of relying on the cough mixture, I turn to traditional Chinese remedies and hope for the best. Elin of    Elinluv's sweet delights   recommended this concoction to me and I tried it ..... 'Double boiled apple with rock sugar'.  Even if you're not coughing you can still make this soothing drink.  Elin has a lot of wonderful recipes and right now she's in the mood of making bread.  Do check out her blog, in fact she has two and I can assure you that you won't be disappointed.

This ginseng soup is traditionally used to improve digestive functions, increase vitality and reduce dampness in our body.  It can be cooked sweet with rock sugar and served as a dessert or cooling drink, or add in some meat to make it savoury, as a soup.

   It's the norm that the CNY period is always hot and humid.  This scenario is further aggravated by the constant baking and deep frying of CNY goodies in the kitchen.  Thus, this prompted me to make this barley drink with shark's fin melon to help cool down our system as we really need plenty of this cooling drink in this hot weather. Shark's fin melon grown in the Cameron Highlands.  Why is it called shark's fin melon?  You'll see in a minute. Upon  cooking, the flesh of the melon can be taken out in shreds and don't they resemble shark's fin?  This crunchy 'shark's fin' drink is indeed very refreshing and nutritious, and it can be taken warm or chilled ...... Gulp, gulp!

I had a persistent bad cough recently and was advised to make this 'Lam Hung, Pak Hung' i.e. Sweet and Bitter almonds drink.  This sweet drink is a remedy to cure a bad cough and also helps to clear phlegm.  Sweet almonds are narrow, elongated in shape and have a thin skin while the bitter almonds are usually shorter, broader and less regular than sweet almonds.  To learn more about these almonds, do hop over to Wikipedia .

Ipoh, besides boasting of its white, fatty beansprouts and smooth, soft Hor fun/Kway Teow used to be famous for its 'Leong Char' aka 'Cooling Tea'.  Actually, not so much the 'leong char',  but for the 'leong char mui' meaning 'cooling tea maiden'. Back in the late '60's and early '70's there were many of these stalls set up by the roadside at night and they were manned by those pretty maidens, well you can say 'pretty maidens in a row'.  There was a great variety of cooling tea to choose from, 'loh hon kor', winter melon, sugar cane, chrysanthemum, not forgetting the very bitter, black as coffee, king of 'leong char', 'Wong Low Kat' , just to name a few.  They were cheap, those days, ranging from 20 to 50 sen per glass. I remember that my mum used to make this concotion of 'Wong Low Kat' at least once a month and more frequently if the weather was unduly hot and dry.  Then me and my sib...