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The ultimate in herbal cooking

ROOTS, fruits, nuts, seeds, fungus and flower petals are the vital, natural ingredients in Betty Saw's newest cookbook. These are all given due emphasis, from the picture on the cover to those inside that suggest the master strokes within Betty Saw's Ultimate Herbal Cookbook.

It’s not all about traditional herbal cooking that involves hours of double-boiling, but also some easy, straightforward dishes using ingredients easily available from Chinese medical halls and supermarkets.

The herbs and other traditional ingredients used in herbal cooking are explained in the first few pages of the book. For instance, I wouldn’t have known that yok chok is also known as Solomon’s Seal, a yellow root used for treating problems of the pancreas, lungs and throat. And each recipe which involves the use of herbs would have an explanation beneath it on what the soup or the herbs do for you.

There is her Baked Herbal Chicken Wings recipe that calls for tong kwai, yok chok, pak kei and kei chee and the balancing effects of these on the body are explained. She is especially proud of her mother’s recipe for Salt-baked Chicken Wings with Wine. "It’s so easy to prepare, but you should have an old wok for this," she said.

Her soups have a modern touch to it. There are no four bowls of water boiled down to two bowls (I’ve never figured out how to do this!). There are easily obtainable ingredients too, such as in the Sharksfin Melon, Carrot and Tong Kwai Soup and the Herbal Chicken, Water Chestnut and Crispy Wonton Soup.

There are also recipes for fish, prawns, vegetables and duck, and you could cook a complete meal for dinner or lunch using these from her book.

For instance, there is the Fillet of Garoupa with Herbal Sauce, Ikan Haruan Steamed with Kei Chi and Yong Sum Soe, Tiger Prawns in Herbal Glutinous Rice Wine, Steamed Duck with Winter Melon, Dried Scallop and Kei Chee Soup and Fresh Wai San Mixed Vegetables.

Best of all, Betty teaches you how to make three types of wines at home – the Foochow Red Rice Wine, Glutinous Rice Wine and Raisin Wine. Imagine you don’t have to order 10 bottles of moonshine from an unknown source if someone related to you is in confinement. You can make your own!

As for recipes with wine, Betty particularly likes the one with the chicken cooked with glutinous rice wine, contributed by her aunt in Singapore.

"It’s a dish to go with rice, and you could drink up all the wine. Everyone remembers it as a confinement dish, but you could use young ginger instead of old when you cook it," she says. The Tiger Prawns in Herbal Glutinous Rice Wine are a favourite too.

The pictures in the book are works of art, evoking an old, classical mood. They are enough to get you moving in the kitchen.

The book could have been more user-friendly if the recipes had been arranged in a proper order according to poultry, fish, vegetables, sweet soups, etc. It would have made for easier reference. The recipe for the raisin wine, for instance, could have been just after the other two wines, instead of being 19 pages away!

The book is sold for RM49.90 at all major bookstores in the country. It’s published by SNP Editions in Singapore, with lovely pictures by creative director and photographer Tuck Loong.

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