Food as Medicine

Mags and I had a ball during Aaron's and Vanessa's last visit, and look forward to seeing them again. I suppose the Chinese medicinal soup recipe I gave them was a tad abbreviated, as I wasn't sure how much time I had to leave the voice-mail – not to mention that I was probably talking a mile a minute. A few days later, one of them called back, asking me to leave it again – but it slipped my mind. This is the complete, detailed recipe. I'm glad they liked it, I'm glad it did the trick, and I'd be just as glad to post the recipe if anyone else can benefit from trying it. I eat a bowl or two whenever I need a "pick me up," and J.R.'s fiancée, Kelly, can also vouch for its effectiveness.

1 lb beef trimmed and cubed.
10 dried shiitake mushrooms, soaked in one cup boiling water for twenty minutes, then drained (reserve water) and halved or sliced.
½ oz. dried Chinese wolfberries (Lycium chinense)
½ cup rice wine. For best results use Chinese "yellow" wine (9-10%) -- not Japanese sake, the cloudy, Korean stuff (granted, it tastes great, but it leaves an unattractive yeast residue at the bottom of the pot), or that Godawful "cooking" rice wine.
½ pint distilled water
½ cup reserved mushroom liquid
Sea salt or rock salt, freshly ground black pepper, and toasted sesame seed oil, to taste

Brown beef cubes in a little oil. Drain and set aside. (If beef is especially greasy, immerse in warm water; then pour off water and excess fat.)

Heat water to boiling. Add beef, wine, wolfberries and ½ cup reserved mushroom liquid. Return to boiling, reduce heat to low and simmer until beef is tender; 2-2.5 hours. Ladle into individual bowls and add sea salt, pepper and sesame oil to taste.

A few notes, comments, etc.:

1.) It's pricey, but I recommend using USDA certified organic beef. A typical American cow eats swill that could gag a maggot, and is so full of growth hormones and whatnot; I've heard one can end up like Lyle Alzado merely by making eye contact with one of the poor critters. I don't trust imported beef at all, and wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole.

2.) Chinese wolfberries (Lycium chinense) are obtainable at most oriental groceries, and are always available from Chinese herbalists. Mags and I can also provide them for a very reasonable price.

3.) If you have the choice, purchase a package of fresh shiitakes from an oriental grocery or well-stocked farmers' market and dry them yourselves. Maggie and I dry our herbs in the tool-shed (it serves the purpose wonderfully), but in a pinch, the oven works nearly as well. Simply set it on "warm" and prop the door open half an inch or so, to allow the water vapor to escape. We buy our dried shiitake in bulk packages at the Buford Highway Farmers' Market or the Hong Kong Supermarket, as we save a bundle in so doing. Dried shiitake, however, often contain sulfites. Neither of us reacts adversely to them, but some people do. This poses a problem. In order to reap the full benefits of the soup, you should add the water used to reconstitute them. If you're sulfite-sensitive, you'll want to pour off the soaking liquid. If, on the other hand, sulfites don't bother you; it's smooth sailing.

I'd also caution you against pissing away your hard-earned denarii on Dynasty, Ka-Me and other overpriced brands unless you have no choice. If there's anything to be said for so-called "globalism" and (chuckle) "free trade," it's that that we're no longer at the mercy of rapacious, American specialty companies… If you don't have an oriental market in your neck of the woods, we can also provide dried shiitakes.

4.) Rice wines come in many varieties. What you'll need is Chinese "yellow" wine, i.e. simple, fermented rice wine. Chinese "white" wine (a.k.a. "fire wine") is a distilled spirit, more like vodka or whiskey than wine, per se. In a pinch, I suppose you could use sake, but the dish doesn't taste as good.

Now as for the theory behind it all…

I can't vouch for the myths surrounding this recipe, but supposedly, one Taoist sage or another ate the stuff every day and lived to be 250. Personally, I wouldn't want to spend 250 years on this shithole of a planet, but I suppose it's best to be healthy whilst serving one's sentence.

Beef is a blood, stomach, spleen and energy tonic. It regulates energy circulation, and is neutral (neither hot nor cold,) sweet and mildly yang.

Shiitake mushrooms (lentinula edodes) are a yin and stomach tonic, and regulate both sputum and energy circulation. They're also neutral, sweet and mildly yang. They're also believed to lower blood fat and cholesterol levels, while experiments conducted in Japan suggest that the enzyme lentinan shows anticancer activity.

Dried wolfberries (lycium chinense) are a blood, liver and kidney tonic. They're said to raise the spirits and slow aging by improving muscle growth and retarding grey hair and rough skin. They're sweet, neutral, and said to act upon the kidney, liver and lung meridians. They're also used to treat dizziness and blurred vision.

I don't think the recipe does much for hairy palms, so I guess you're shit out o' luck, John.... Heh heh heh…

More Soup

My bro, John (he of the hirsute hands), bought me one hell of a birthday present – a ticket to the Motorhead gig at the Fillmore in Charlotte, NC the weekend of the eleventh. The show was fantastic (I'll have more to say about it later), and as always, I had a great time. Yeah, we acted like a couple of drunken assholes, but what do you expect from two Celts who never really grew up? Besides, no animals, immigrants or epileptics were harmed during the proceedings (we didn't even hijack the little school bus with tinted windows and crash it into a retirement home), so what the fuck? We were so well-behaved, as a matter of fact; the only injury I sustained was a twisted ankle whilst negotiating his backyard in the dark. (The "Jimmy Riddle" was occupied, and I really had to go…)

Mags, unfortunately, didn't fare so well. She's not what you'd call a Motorhead fan (and I can't imagine her putting up with King's X for any length of time), so she enjoyed a quiet (read: husband-and-his-asshole-buddies-free) evening at John's place while he and I compromised our self-respect with a vengeance and otherwise enjoyed the show. Now we're the ones who were out tanking up, headbanging, otherwise lowering our resistance, and exposing ourselves to God-alone-knows what kind of microorganisms at the show, OK?

Care to guess who gets sick the next morning, though?

Yep -- the wife. I dragged my ass out of bed sometime between sunrise and noon, had a little "hair of the dog" (and it was a reg'lar pit bull, lemme tell ye'…) and went to check on the spousal unit. Needless to say, she wasn't doing very well. I spent some time observing her and noticed that her symptoms were disturbingly flu-like. She was clammy, sweaty, nauseous, and had a nasty, rumbling cough. Now I've had bad experiences treating females with influenza, so I very nearly had a "flashback" – before remembering where I was.

Back in '84, my girlfriend came down with the flu. Her folks were out of town, and she was supposed to spend the night at her best friend's house. Unfortunately, that was nearly half a mile away, she was sick as a dog, and it was a rather cold winter evening. Not being as much of a prick as I'd like people to believe, I promptly called Ma Bean and had her pick us up. Ma called her parents and explained the situation to them, and we spent the rest of the evening babying her. For my pains, I came down with the flu a couple days later…

I caught it once more in 1997 – the same year I stopped going to doctors and took up "alternative" medicine, by the way. And I haven't had it since – knock on wood. Mags, though, has rather weak chi (we're working on it…), and is more susceptible to certain illnesses than I am. Now I understand that there's no scientific basis for alternative/Chinese/Amerind/Ayurvedic medicine, yadda yadda yadda. I also know that it works, so I'll let the scientists worry about the apparent paradoxes.

In some ways, I'm a bit more robust these days than I was at seventeen or even thirty, so I was more worried about the wife than about myself. Not being quite the prick I'd have people believe (to reiterate), I explained my predicament to dairlin' Johnny-O. Being a hell of a bro, he had us on the road in no time. Unfortunately, Charlotte's Asian population ain't as large as Atlanta's – and I'd left my "toybox" at home. I should have learned my lesson in Colorado in '08, when I suffered a fractured rib and had to mooch some tieh tah wan (it tastes awful, and merely reading the ingredient label serves as a mild emetic, but it works like a charm…) from a friend, but I didn't. Since I couldn't obtain the herbs I needed, I opted for nutritional therapy and acupressure.

Now Harris-Teeter ain't the best supermarket chain on earth. They charge Publix-level prices, but only offer Wal-Mart- or Ingles-level service, but beggars can't be choosers. I found most of the things I needed and made the soup for Mags. After feeding her some, prodding a few pressure points, resorting to a bit of reflexology and an ancient Muskogee healing ritual that's been handed down for generations (just kidding about that part – I'm less than 1/200 Indian, and am probably the whitest white guy on earth) I had her on her feet again in a couple hours.

This "miracle food," incidentally, was nothing but an Asian version of "Jewish Mothers' penicillin": chicken soup. The complete recipe follows.

1 lb chicken parts, minimum – preferably with bones, although breasts also work very well
3 quarter-sized slices ginger root (unpeeled)
1 stalk celery, with leaves
1 carrot (unpeeled)
½ bunch parsley (preferably flat-leaf)
3 cloves garlic, crushed
3-4 whole scallions, with roots
1 dried chile
½ head Savoy or Chinese cabbage, chopped (optional)
6 shiitake mushrooms, reconstituted and sliced
2 medium portabella mushrooms, sliced (optional)
½ cup button mushrooms, sliced (optional)
water to cover
sea salt to taste
few drops sesame oil

Bring water, chicken, chile and herbs to the boil. Reduce heat and simmer one hour, skimming foam as it rises. Remove carrot, celery, parsley, garlic and scallions. Remove chicken and cut from bones. Return chicken to soup, along with mushrooms. Return to boiling, reduce heat, cover, and simmer 20 minutes. longer. Add cabbage, simmer five to ten minutes longer, add sesame oil and salt to taste, then serve.

Comments

[John]

Hey, now. I'm a domesticated and docile sort of lad since Mayna made the move. I've been shaving the palms almost daily. I've also been trimming my nails with proper clippers rather than just gnawing on them during conference calls.

[Dave]

Ain't it the damndest thing? Women just seem to have that effect on a feller. Why, I, m'self have stopped sittin' on the front porch in m' under-whaars, scratchin' m' nutsack in public, an' pissin' on fire hydrants since "tyin' the knot"...

Hope I ain't "goin' Nellie" or nothin' like that... ;-)