Night Blooming Cereus Soup (霸王花老火靓汤)

I just came back from Hong Kong last week. I basically buy nothing much. The thing that I bought are food related stuffs. The dried seafood, chinese herbs & etcs in Hong Kong is cheaper and better in quality. 

This week, I wanted to introduce you this soup. The soup that might sounds not familiar to you, but it is the soup that is refreshing and you may want to give it a try.

Night Blooming Cereus Soup (霸王花老火靓汤)

I spotted Night Blooming Cereus Soup Pack in Hong Kong. So, I've got myself 2 pack of it. Everything is in there, except pork ribs and dried cuttlefish that I need to add in. Reason? I'm lazy. So, since I saw a convi pack selling there, why not?

What is Night Blooming Cereus (霸王花)? It sounds not familiar to you, right? Infact, not many people know how to use this. According to the net, Night Blooming Cereus it is the common name referring to a large number of flowering Cereus that bloom at night. They belongs to the cactus family. The flowers are short lived. Some of the species only bloom once a year, for a single night. I read abit about this flower, and I realized that it has high nutrition and medication goodness in there.

Most of the ingredients in a pot of Chinese soup has its medicinal purpose which is really difficult to explain using English. Probably chinese writing would be easier to explain it's goodness? (Source: www.hudong.com) 

霸王花性味甘微寒，具有丰富的营养价值和药用价值，对治疗脑动脉硬化、肺结核、支气管炎、颈淋巴结核、腮腺炎、心血管疾病有明显疗效，它具有清热润肺，除痰止咳，滋补养颜之功能，是极佳的清补汤料。

霸王花性味甘、凉，入肺，具有清热痰、除积热、止气痛、理痰火的功效。因此，霸王花煲汤具有清心润肺、清暑解热、除痰止咳的作用。其次，霸王花煲汤对辅助治疗脑动脉硬化、心血管疾病、肺结核、支气管炎、颈淋巴结核、腮腺炎等有明显疗效以及滋补养颜的功能。而且，霸王花制汤后，其味清香、汤甜滑，深为“煲汤一族”的广东人所喜爱，是极佳的清补汤料。


This is how the dried Night Blooming Cereus looks like. You can get it from general chinese medical hall or some of the dried sundries shop that sells general dried seafood and stuffs like that. I spotted this at one of the dried sundries shop in RedHill Wet Market over the weekend.

Removed the content from the convi pack. It has Night Blooming Cereus, Chinese Sweet Dates, mixed Chinese Almonds, and a mini Luo-Han-Kuo (Grosvenor Momordica Fruit). With my convi pack, all I need is to add is Dried Cuttlefish and Pork Ribs in there, and I will have a complete ingredients for my soup.

But please not to worry, all these ingredients can be easily bought from any chinese medical hall in Singapore & Malaysia. So, no problem at all if you wants to make this soup.

Ingredients (Serves 3 - 4 Pax) 

• 75g Night Blooming Cereus (霸王花)
• 30g Chinese Sweet Dates (蜜枣), about 3 pcs.
• 15g Mixture of Chinese Almonds (南杏+北杏)
• 1 small Luo Han Guo-Grosvenor Momordica Fruit (罗汉果).
• 230g Pork Ribs (about S$3.00 from wet market butcher.)
• 20g Dried Cuttlefish
• 2L Water
• salt to taste

The Luo Han Guo in the convi pack is really miserably mini sized. It weighted about 5g only. Sigh! You could get a bigger one. No problem on that. For the mixture of chinese almonds, you could go ahead and add more if you want.

Method

1. Rinse pork ribs, scald in boiling water for awhile, remove and rinse.

2. Wash the rest of the ingredients

3. In a soup pot, put everything in (except salt). Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer the soup over low heat for 3 hours. And if you have the time, make it 4 hours!

4. Salt to taste before serve

And this is what i called a pot of good soup with Umph! lou-foh-leng-tong 老火靓汤! My advise... Buy a slow cooker lah! This will ease alot of pain :)

This soup may looks dull in color due to the natural color from Luo Han Kuo. But it's really sweet and refreshing. Try it!