STOP Dry Throat , Mouth & Dry Skin with this Snow Fungus Pear Dessert (Tong Sui) - 小吊梨汤润肺生津

Think dessert can't be healthy? These traditional Chinese sweet soups hydrates your skin, soothes dry throats and satisfies your sweet tooth. Perfect for autumn or any dry season. Let me show you how it works and how to make it step by step. Hi everyone, my name is Chia Liem, a Chinese medicine practitioner and a pharmacist from Australia currently living in the UK. Welcome back to Chinese herbal pantry. This channel is about teaching you how to use food as medicine based on traditional Chinese medicine theories. Today I'm going to introduce you to a very traditional Chinese dessert or sometimes we call it Tang Shui or Tong Shui means sweet soup which I already explained in the first part of this video here. You can go to check it out what exactly is sweet soup but otherwise basically a sweet soup is a combination of some Chinese herbs or other food ingredients and they work together and create a nice refreshing dessert. That's how we often eat in Asia. You can eat it cold, you can eat it warm. The idea is super healthy. The sweet soup I'm going to introduce you today is very common among the Asian community and actually different regions might have a slightly different recipe. The one that I'm going to teach you today is more common in Beijing. So what we often see is a combination of snow pear and the snow fungus. It's a soup that we use this combination to clear dryness especially dry mouth, dry throat or just during dry season. Both are considered kind of whitish or light color. Those are the best ingredients we commonly use during autumn time if you live in four season country. If you live in any other places, these two ingredients are a good combination during any dry season or like hot weather. The reason being the pear is actually cooling. The pear that we use is the Asian pear or the snow pear not exactly the same as the one that you find in the western grocery. So this is what we use and it can help to relieve the dry throat, dry mouth as well as mild cough caused by heat because this is cooling. The snow fungus is neutral. I have taught two recipes in this channel. One is sweet and one is a savory one. You can check them out here. I'll explain the overall function but quickly here. The snow fungus is help to nourish the yin. Yin usually represent the fluid. So that's why when you are dry, we need to nourish our yin. And these two ingredients will also say it support the Chinese medicine lung. That's why it can help to relieve the dry cough or the dry throat which is connected to our lung. According to traditional Chinese medicine, we say lung is connected to our skin. That's why it can also help to relieve dry skin. So mostly in other YouTube channels, you probably see a lot of videos have this combination and then they might add other ingredients to support the recipe. Too often that you see is the red date or the Chinese date and the goji berry. So it gives the sweetness, it gives the color and the red date is slightly warming but if you remove the seed, it will reduce the warm. So kind of still make this recipe not overly too warm. And we also have the goji berry. The goji berry is to nourish the yin. So similar function to the snow fungus. What's special about this recipe is I add the preserved plum, suan mei or hua mei. Give us a tinge of sourness. This extra ingredient make this recipe special. It become a xiao diao li tang. So it's a traditional recipe from Beijing. Most of the other recipe you probably don't see adding this too much. Basically is to adding a sour flavor into the recipe. According to traditional Chinese medicine, there is a saying suan gan hua yin. Suan is sour, gan is sweet. Hua yin means that when you combine sour flavor and the sweet flavor together, it will generate yin. So one of the most typical recipe that you often see is sweet and sour pork. So you have the sweet and the sour. Just the sweetness just doesn't quite give you that flavor profile. By adding these two flavors together, somehow it just feel a lot tastier and we kind of feeling our saliva is salivating. So this is what we want to create in this recipe. And in the Huang Di Nei Jing, they already talked about this concept. Combining sour and sweet will generate fluid. So that's the idea of this recipe. And that's why not only the sour plum will help with that, I also add two small slices of tangerine peel. As for the sugar, I will add a bit of Chinese rock sugar. According to traditional Chinese medicine, the Chinese rock sugar support our TCM lung and it's also slightly cooling. In the ancient day, they don't have a lot of sugar and sugar is very expensive. But today, I think we just have too much of sugar. So it's entirely up to you because I think there's no pear, red dates and the goji berry already give us enough sweetness. Just add a little bit to your own liking and just enhance it a little bit. Otherwise, you don't have to. If you can't find Chinese rock sugar, it's okay. Just use a small amount of sugar that you have at home. Okay, so the idea of cutting the snow fungus in much smaller pieces is that in Chinese, we call it qi jiao, means that we cook the snow fungus until it's almost like a gelatin form or collagen form. So cutting it smaller will help with that, unless if you enjoy the texture of the snow fungus, as in kind of a bit crunchy, a bit chewy. So you don't have to cut it small, you can leave it in the last pieces. Okay, so now let's prepare the pear. So for the pear, give it a good wash. But usually we try to keep the skin, the pear skin, because we think that the pear skin has similar functions to the pear flesh. And it's also cooling, it helps to generate the fluid, so it will help to relieve the dryness. But just to make sure it's properly clean, I tend to like to have, depending on whether you can trust your sauce or if they are organic, I just kind of like to have a bit of sea salt just to give the skin a good rub. Because I'm going to put it into the sweet soup. Okay, give it a good wash. So now we will cut them into small pieces. We will remove the seed. I like to cut them into much smaller pieces. Ideally, I kind of like it all kind of melting into the sweet soup, creating a thicker soup. And the red dates, as well as the tangerine peels, are also all wakened up and soaked for about 10-20 minutes now. So I'm going to clean them and then we're ready to cook. So now we'll start cooking, have everything ready here. The snow fungus, snow pears, the tangerine peel, red dates, as well as the preserved or sour plum. And water. So first thing we will do is to start with the water. I will boil the water first. So now the water is boiling, I'm going to put in the snow fungus now. Next will be the pear flesh. We now put the pear skin. And then will be the red dates and the tangerine peel. The good thing about this recipe is you can put all the ingredients all at once. The only ingredient to come in last is the goji berry because I still like to have the color and the textures at the end. So not just all mush in there. Otherwise, all the ingredients go in all at once. So now I'm going to turn it down to medium or low. Just let it simmer for at least half an hour to even a little bit longer, depending on how big the portion you want to make. My personal idea for this is to cook it until the snow fungus is kind of a little bit more mushy. So you have a thicker consistency. If you like the snow fungus texture, you don't have to do that. OK, so I'm just going to leave that on on medium high, low to medium high. I like to be a little bit in between. So you have the simmering, not too low. OK, leave it on a little bit ajar just so it doesn't spill. OK, now we just have to wait. Now it's already been cooking for about two hours or so. The sunlight is shining on the other table, so I have to move to this corner now. So you can come and have a look. The color is a bit darker because of the cooking and also the color from the red dates. And as you can see, the water, it's kind of really becoming really thick now. OK, that's almost about right. So now the last ingredient, I have washed some goji berry. Now we'll put it in. Because the goji berry just got in, so I'm just going to leave it for another five minutes or so. Actually, one final ingredient, which is the rock sugar. OK, so it's really up to individual how sweet you want it to be. Let me have a quick taste first. I can put just a little bit in and then you give it a good stir and that's ready. OK, so now let's do a tasting here. I really enjoy it because I feel like when the liquid is so thick, it kind of gives a good coating to my throat, especially for dry weather or when you have a very dry throat. And while the pear and red dates are sweet, and then we have that tinge of sour plum and the tangerine peel in there. So it's the sweet and sour really come together. I think this sort of sweet soup is perfect for those who kind of crave for sweet, but want to have less calorie. So this will be a good alternative. At the same time, you have the health benefit and there's no dairy in there. It's gluten free. So I see it as a very healthy alternative sweet treat, which I often make at home for myself. Anyway, that's all for today. And I hope you enjoyed the video. And don't forget to subscribe if you haven't already and share this with your friends and family if you think they also enjoy this sort of sweet treat. That's all. Bye. Thank you. I'll see you next time.