Feel better soup from Shanghai

If I were asked to think of another country where something sweet was considered therapeutic, I’d be hard pressed to come up with an answer. But China does this on a regular basis. Case in point: this marvelous concoction.

In many ways, this is very similar to a regular old fermented rice soup. Shanghai, though, manages to ratchet the flavors and textures and colors up a whole lot, creating something that is quite unique all the way around. Corn is in there to round out the nutrition and add wonderful bits for the teeth to play with, and wolfberries add a dash of scarlet and light sourness to the mix. Did I happen to mention that this is delicious, too?

Chinese moms whip up soups like this whenever someone doesn’t feel well, has had a baby, or is otherwise miserable. One reason for this is that the fermented rice gets the circulation going, which warms up the toes and makes life seem just a tad more livable. Second is that it just tastes so darned good. And third is, it’s a snap to pull together.

Shave off the kernels

Fermented rice, wolfberry, and corn soup

Gŏuqĭ jīróng yùmĭ gēng  枸杞雞蓉玉米羹

Serves 8

¼ cup / 30g wolfberries

Boiling water, as needed

2 ears fresh corn, or around 1½ cups / 300g frozen tender corn kernels

2 cups / 450ml fermented rice, both solids and liquid

Rock sugar, to taste

1 tablespoon cornstarch dissolved in 2 tablespoons cool water

2 large eggs, lightly beaten

1. Rinse the wolfberries, place them in a small heatproof bowl, and cover with boiling water while you prepare the rest of the ingredients.

2. Cut the corn off of the cobs and use your knife to scrape off any pulp and juice. Or, measure out the frozen corn.

Totally luscious

3. About 10 minutes before you serve this, bring 3 cups of water to a full boil in a medium saucepan. Add the wolfberries, their soaking liquid, and the corn. Allow the soup to come to a boil again, and then use a whisk to stir in the fermented rice so that it breaks apart into grains. Add about 1 tablespoon rock sugar, or to taste. When it comes to a boil the third time, stir in the cornstarch mixture until the soup has thickened.

4. Remove the pan from the heat and drizzle the eggs on top in a thin ribbon, back and forth. Wait for about a minute, and then gently stir to make the eggs form gentle wisps. Serve immediately.

Tips

This can be made ahead of time up through Step 3. But don’t add the eggs until the last minute, as you want them to be silky and soft. Reheating the soup just turns them leathery.

Consider this for breakfast, too

The secret to these velvety eggs is the way in which they are poached: the pan is taken off the heat, the eggs are dribbled across the top (never poured into the pan in a vast puddle), and then they are left alone to set up. This way they won’t turn into nasty little tough threads. Instead, they will be sensuous and calming. A simple trick, but incredibly useful.

If you don't want to serve this all at once, reserve half (or so) of the soup after you’ve finished with Step 3 and add the eggs to whatever you’re eating at the time.

Longan soup with lily bulbs

China has a rich and varied love affair with sweet soups. These are often served as afternoon treats or late at night as snacks, rather than as desserts, but I like them even for breakfast with some buttered toast or steamed buns. Hot soups are great in winter, while chilled ones make even the muggiest days bearable.

This recipe calls for delicate edible lily bulbs, a lovely vegetable grown mainly in Lanzhou, the capital of Gansu Province in China’s desert region up near Inner Mongolia. 

Packaged lily bulbs

These are gradually becoming more common on this side of the Pacific, so snap them up if they appear in your market, and they almost always appear as sets of four in little blue plastic bags. 

The only caveat when cooking with these bulbs is that you never want to overcook them, as their crispy texture quickly mushes up. So, just bring them to a boil and serve immediately. If you don’t have fresh lily bulbs in your area yet, a handful of peeled fresh water chestnuts or even some thin slices of jicama will do. 

Any one of these sweet vegetables will add beauty and contrast to the dark, almost caramelized flavor of the dried longans, or “dragon eyes.” 

Dried longans releasing their flavor

A relative of sorts to the lychee, longans appear fresh in Chinese markets at the end of summer, right after lychees finish their peak season. Smaller and more highly perfumed, they dry into beautiful little brown balls and are tasty to eat just as is. Or maybe I just love dried fruit no matter what.

But back to those lily bulbs.

First off, don't use just any old lily bulbs here, as not all of them are edible. This is important. Only use Gansu-style lily bulbs. 

When you prep the fresh lily bulbs, consider leaving enough connected to the root area so that they can have a chance to grow into plants. What I do is break off the "petals" on the bulbs until I get to a firm center that looks very much like a peeled clove of garlic. 

Peel off the petals

Then, I set the "cloves" in a pot with good potting soil, water thoroughly, and with any luck have a plant poking up in a couple of weeks.

These are gorgeous in the yard - they look for all the world like tiger lilies - and will keep coming back as long as you leave the little bulblets (miniature bulbs that look like white seeds) in the ground for next year's crop. 

Harvest the bulbs any time after the tops have dried. I tend to keep them in the soil until I need them, as they stay fresher. And, if I forget, they will be there for me next year.

Longan soup with lily bulbs 

Băihé guìyuán tāng  百合桂圓湯

Shanghai

Serves 6

½ cup/80g dried pitted longans

Baby lily plant

6 cups/1.5l water

1 tablespoon rock sugar, or to taste

2 tablespoons osmanthus syrup

4 fresh lily bulbs

1. Rinse the longans in a sieve before placing them in a saucepan. Cover with the water and bring this to a boil. Simmer the longans until they have completely plumped up, about 30 minutes. Add the rock sugar and osmanthus syrup; taste and adjust seasoning.

2. Wash the lily bulbs to remove any sawdust. Trim off dark or bruised areas before separating the bulbs into petals; the tight centers can simply be sliced in half if you don't plan on planting them. Cover them with cold water if you are not serving the soup right away, as they should not be cooked longer than a flash.

A visual, textural, & aromatic treat

3. Just before serving, bring the soup to a boil. Drain the lily bulbs and add them to the soup. Bring it back to a full boil and then immediately remove it from the heat. Divide the soup into individual bowls before serving.

Winter Solstice soup

Winter Solstice is finally here, the time when the nights are longest and the days shortest. Today (December 21) is the Winter Solstice according to our Western calendar, but the Chinese lunar calendar says that Dõngzhì 冬至 (literally, “winter is here,” which is a step up from the Stark clan’s motto of “winter is coming”) is tomorrow. Maybe that’s because China is, after all about half a world away or something.

In many ways, this is my favorite holiday of the year. I think it has to do with hope – hope that the days will soon grow longer, that the trees will start to explode with green shoots, and that the earth’s surface will begin to crumble as seeds sprout and the growing season gets underway.

Homemade rice pearls

And so, before our planet starts to tip the other way and welcome more of the sun’s rays, it’s time to celebrate the joys of winter. Chief among them in my book is hot, filling, nourishing foods. The Chinese do soups better than anyone else, I think. Part of the reason for my saying this is that sweet soups and cold soups are just as important throughout the culture as savory and hot ones.

Just about every Han Chinese cuisine has a deep weakness for sweet soups. And I cannot for the life of me figure out why this isn’t the case in every other great food tradition. Yes, we have our hot chocolate and coffee and milky teas, but no matter how good they are, they don’t have the body and variety and the wonderful textures of a gently sweet soup that soothes a chilled body and is just so satisfying.

Cut up the dough and then roll

In my family, this is the soup we come back to again and again whenever it’s cold out. It also contains those soft rice-paste balls called yuanzi in Chinese, something my husband starts clamoring for this time of year. That’s because Winter Solstice is almost always celebrated with these little pillows in Han Chinese cuisines, either plain like this or stuffed with a sweet nut or bean paste. (Here is a recipe from a Muslim part of China that is highly recommended, too.)

In the future I’ll show you how to make the stuffed ones, but right now with the holidays coming up, no one has time for something that fussy. Instead, I really want you to try this, so I’m making it absolutely as simple as possible. And, if the week really is getting out of hand, do know that you can go an even simpler route and simply buy a can of red bean paste (chunky, if at all possible), dilute it to taste with water, thicken it with a cornstarch slurry, and toss in some frozen rice balls. It’s been done before and it’s better than nothing.

Soak the beans until easily pierced

However, the following recipe is hundreds of times better. For one thing, the texture of the beans becomes really silky when they are soaked overnight and then cooked until they simply explode out of what seems like simple exhaustion.

I use a pressure cooker to speed things up, but a regular pan on the stove will work, too. Then, instead of regular sugar, I add some sweetened condensed milk, which adds another layer of satiny richness without making this soup too sweet.

Finally, rice balls get tossed in. These are easy to put together and kids love to make them, as it’s sort of like edible Play-Doh. So, seriously consider using child labor here and freeze the extra rice balls, as they store well.

Happy holidays!

Sweet red bean soup with rice pearls

Hóngdòu yuánzi tāng 紅豆圓子湯

North China

Makes around 2 quarts and serves 6 to 8 generously

Red bean soup:

1½ cups dried small red beans (like adzuki)

Here's your beans

Water, as needed

About ¼ to ½ cup sweetened condensed milk, store-bought or homemade

Rice pearls:

½ cup sticky rice flour (aka sweet rice flour or glutinous rice flour)

¼ cup cool water

2 cups boiling water

1. The night before you plan to make the soup, pick over the beans just in case some pebbles or detritus are hiding in there. Rinse the beans and then soak them in cool water for at least 8 hours by covering them with the water by a couple of inches so that they have room to expand. If they are fresh, the beans will be swollen in the morning and you will be able to pierce them with your fingernail.

2. Drain off the water and place the beans in either a pressure cooker or a regular quart pan. Cover the beans with fresh water by a couple of inches. If you’re using a pressure cooker, lock on the lid, bring the pan to a boil over high heat, and then lower the heat to maintain an even high pressure; cook the beans this way for about 30 minutes, or until they are very soft. If you are using a regular pan, bring the uncovered pan to a full boil before reducing the heat for a lively simmer, and then cook the beans until they too are extremely soft and broken, which will take at least an hour or two, depending upon the freshness and size of the beans, as well as the heat of your stove. (Accurate cooking times for dried beans are one of the hardest things to give with any confidence, so you will have to use your own judgment here. Sorry.)

Stir the water into the rice flour

3. Once the beans are done, check their texture: They need to be very creamy and soft for this recipe to work, so simmer them longer if need be. Also, adjust the thickness of the soup by adding more boiling water, if you like. I prefer this particular soup a bit on the thin side, which means that I end up with about 2 quarts soup, but there’s plenty of wiggle room here. Finally, stir in as much of the sweetened condensed milk as you like. (This soup can be made ahead of time up to this point and either refrigerated or frozen.)

Mix into a soft dough

4. To make the rice pearls, begin by placing the rice flour in a medium mixing bowl. Mix the water into the flour to form a soft dough. Place the dough on a smooth surface and knead it briefly. Roll the dough out into a long rope about ½-inch thick and then break off or cut the rope into around 36 pieces. Roll each piece into a small ball, and wet your hands as you shape them if the dough feels a bit dry or the balls look like they are cracking. (These can be made ahead of time and frozen; see Tips.)

5. Just before serving, bring the 2 cups water to a boil in a medium saucepan and then add the rice pearls in loose handfuls so that they do not stick together; stir after each addition to help separate the little balls. As soon as the water comes to a boil again and the pearls rise to the surface, drain off the water and add the pearls to the red bean soup. Serve immediately so that the rice pearls do not soften.

Tips

The rice pearls can be made ahead of time and frozen on a pan lined with plastic wrap. As soon as the rice pearls are hard, place them in a freezer bag and store for up to a couple of months. If the balls looked cracked or if the bag is full of ice crystals, discard and make a new batch.

 

Korean sticky rice flour

About the only things I’d caution you here is that, first, you get fresh beans from a busy store, as they cook much, much, much faster that way and will give you a marvelously silky texture, while old beans will remain old beans no matter what you do. Second, make sure your sticky rice flour is fresh, too, as there’s nothing in here than can cover a musty flavor. If the package is already opened, smell it and then take a tiny taste of the flour: It should have no aroma or taste other than that of rice. And third, use either homemade sweetened condensed milk or organic canned. There are so few ingredients in here that they all need to shine.

Stop! This is regular rice flour

Mochiko Sweet Rice Flour is by standby brand for the sticky rice flour, but others can be good, too. Korea and Thailand have some good ones, for example. 

Sometimes, though, the Thai brands can be hard to figure out. If you read Chinese, look for the characters nuòmǐ 糯米 (sticky rice) on the bag. If it says zhānmǐ 粘米, that is regular rice flour (like ground sushi rice) - don't use that here.