Ching Po Leung

For the Chinese, soup is not merely something to eat.

Traditional Chinese medicine holds that when the flow of Qi (氣), or ji (vital breath) is disrupted or impeded in the body's pathways, illness results, and soup is regarded among all foods as one of the prime methods of delivering and restoring harmony within the body.

If your system is overheated, for example, you could eat a soup designed to cool your system: to renew the balance between the Yin and Yang. There's much more to this idea, but for our purposes there's no need to delve deeper; you can enjoy Chinese soups whether or not you subscribe to this theory.

View large image One of my favourite soups is called Ching Po Leung (清補凉). In Cantonese, the prime definitions of ching are pure, clean, and clear; while po can mean repair, patch, mend, and nutritious. Leung means either cool or cold. Taken together, the overall meaning is a cooling, nutritious tonic to clean and repair the body.

Good for all seasons but even better during Hong Kong's brutal summers, Ching Po Leung is purported to be good for the stomach, spleen and lungs, it's also said to reduce phlegm and improve the skin. I don't know about you, but I'm all for less phlegm.

So what's in it? A typical store-bought package usually contains most or all of these desiccated ingredients: Arillus Longan (fruit), Bulbus Lilii (lily bulb), Euryale Ferox (fox nuts), honey dates, lotus seeds, pearl barley, Radix Glehniae (root), Rhizoma Dioscoreae (Chinese yam), Rhizoma Polygonati Odorati (King Solomon's Seal; root), Semen Coicis (coix seed), and Semen Euryales (Gordon Euryale seed). The alternative would be to visit a Chinese herbalist, who will select the mix and quantity of ingredients based on the number of people who will be eating the soup.

In Hong Kong, most people prepare the soup with a broth of meaty pork neck bones, yellow rock sugar and salt. The stock is boiled and skimmed to remove the foam produced by the meat. After the dried ingredients have been rinsed and drained, they're added to the broth and simmered for at least two hours. If refrigerated after cooking, the soup can be eaten as a dessert, sometimes with almonds added.

Being conscious of fat and sugar intake, I substitute one pound of lean pork, and leave out the rock sugar altogether (three or four honey dates add enough sweetness as it is). I also favour simmering the soup for three hours as the pork becomes so tender it falls apart.

Whenever I feel drained and lack energy, often a result of running errands in the humid, baking heat, I pop into the local Chinese medicine shop and order a package of Ching Po Leung. It's easy to make and is refreshing indeed.

So if you've never tasted it, give it a try: you might find that it's more than just soup.

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