[Recipe] Green Bean Soup

One of the recommended food to consume during this hazy season is the green bean soup.  Green beans are able to help expel the heat and toxin substance from the body.  Green bean soup can be consumed warm or cold.  Unconsumed green bean soup can be kept in the fridge.  Heat it up before consuming if you like it warm. 

Found this rather simple recipe for Singapore-style green bean soup from another website noobcook.

Green Bean Soup 绿豆汤

• Serves: 4
• Prep: 10 mins
• Cook: 60 mins

Where yin and yang of foods go, green bean soup is "yin" (cooling) while red bean soup is "yang" (warming), so this is perfect for the hot summer weather. If you do not wish to add any sago to your green bean soup, skip step 1.

Ingredients

• 100 grams green beans (aka mung beans/lu dou/綠豆) soaked overnight, rinsed and drained
• 2 pandan (screw pine) leaves dried ends cut, tied in a knot
• 1.7 litres water
• 70 grams rock sugar (冰糖) to taste
• 10 grams (or 3 small pieces) dried orange (tangerine) peel (陈皮)
• 80 grams canned or vacuum-packed lotus seeds or ginkgo nuts optional
• 50 grams (1/3 cup) small sago (small tapioca pearls)

Instructions

1. Bring a small pot of water to boil. Add sago and simmer for 10 minutes. Turn off the stove, cover the pot with lid and let the sago continue to cook on its own for another 10 minutes, until all the sago turns translucent. Run the cooked sago through a fine sieve and running water to remove excess starch. Set aside. Check out this step-by-step photo tutorial for preparing sago.
2. In a bigger soup pot, add green beans, 1.7 litres water, dried orange peel and pandan leaves. Bring to a boil.
3. Add lotus seeds/gingko nuts and reduce heat to a simmer, partially covered, for about 50 minutes (or until the beans are soft), stirring the sides and bottom of the pot occasionally. Top up with hot water at any time if necessary.
4. Stir in rock sugar (to taste) until the sugar is dissolved. Discard orange peel slices and pandan leaves. Add the cooked sago prepared in step 1 to the green bean soup. Serve warmed or chilled.

Summer Desserts - Patbingsu and Ice Kacang

For country like Singapore where we do not have 4 distinctive seasons, we have perhaps missed out the fun of enjoying things that others living in seasonal countries do.  Besides the change in fashion or experiencing seasonal activities such skiing, cherry blossoms, we also missed out the fun of enjoying food that are in season as the weather changes.

As the temperature rises from sub-zero to now hitting a high of almost 30 degrees in Korea, summer dessert patbingsu (팥빙수), a shaved ice dessert topped up with generous serving of red beans, fruits, ice cream and rice cake, is a common dessert that runs from June to perhaps mid October.  It could come with different variety such as even green tea or coffee flavours.

While in Jeonju last year, I tried this delicious bingsu.  What made this bingsu memorable was the black sesame paste that was drenched onto the shaved ice.  The white pieces are plain rice cakes while the green centre piece was green tea rice cake.  The sweet taste for this dessert was mainly from the generous portion of the sweetened red beans that topped over the shaved ice.

Oh well, in Singapore.  While there are now many Korean restaurants serving steamboats, BBQ and many other dishes, I can hardly find any Korean dessert shops. The solely existing cafe that serves bingsu is Seoul Yummy.  The tall ice cream attracts all the attention away from patbingsu, didn't it?

In any case, Singapore do have our own version of shaved ice dessert, Ice Kacang.  With our historical connection with Malaysia, kacang is a Malay word for red beans.  If you wonder where the red beans are, they are covered by the ice.  In fact, other than red beans, the other hidden ingredients include sweet corns, attap seeds (palm seeds) and jelly.  There are different varieties too for the Singapore shaved ice.  How about one that's topped off with Hershey's Chocolate Syrup like what you see in this picture?  ^^

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