Recipe for Midnight Bloom Soup

Ingredients:

• 400 grams of lean pork
• 4-5 stalks of midnight blooms
• Chinese herbal herbs: Bei Qi 北芪, Dangshen 黨參, Huai Shan 淮山 , Yu Zhu 玉竹
  , Gou Qi Zi 枸杞子, Nan Xing 南杏 and Bei Xing北杏. ( If you are near a Chinese Medical Hall or Chinese Herbal Shop, just ask them for these herbs to be mixed for 4 servings)
• 1 piece of Dried cuttlefish
• 3 red dates

Method:　

Chinese Herbs for soup: Always soak them before boiling.

Please note: It is best to soak the Chinese herbs in the water for about 15 minutes before boiling them. By doing this you will get more out of the herbs as what we Chinese call: 出水.  It helps in the extraction of the herbal essence during the process of boiling.

Place Chinese herbs and lean meat into the pressure cooker, set it to high heat, once it starts to whistle, let it peep for a few times, do a natural release remove and transfer to a Chinese glazed soup pot. ( You don’t need a lot of water at this first stage of boiling, enough of water to cover the herbs and lean meat will be fine for now.)

What I have prepared here was enough for 4 to 5 servings, so in order to gauge the amount of water needed for the next step, we will need to do a grandma’s counting method.  As grandma would say, 5 bowls into 1 bowl or 6 bowls into 2 bowls. What she is trying to tell is : gauge it yourself, in other words don’t fall asleep while boiling soup. (Looking at the fire, 看火) is very important, but don’t get yourself burnt, which leaves us no soup for the night.

The easiest way is, double the amount of water for the amount to be served. So here I will take 9 bowls of water for 4 bowls of soup, the extra bowl of water, just in case I fell asleep while watching the fire.

Chinese Glazed Clay Soup Pot also known 

as Man Standing Pot in Cantonese

Oh before I forget, you should be adding hot water not cold water. Since we are using a glazed Chinese Soup pot, we’ll need to slow boil it for at least 4 hours in low heat. That means, start making your soup at around 2pm for 7 pm dinner.

Lean Pork

Dried Cuttlefish, you must wash them before cooking,
best that you cut them up in smaller pieces before cooking.
You may also like to dried Octopus.

Soaked the Midnight Bloom in a bowl
 of water for about 10 to 15 minutes.