The Silky News on Corn

Since corn just happens to be in season and I also just happen to be getting a lot of patients which I have prescribed this decoction for, I thought I would share it on here. It also has such a lovely name: corn silk. I love the feeling that the name emits for some reason. It sounds tasty and like something you could perhaps wear? In any event, this last weekend I made corn a la Mexican style (keeping the husk on sans silk, letting it soak in water, olive oil, chile flakes, salt for an hour or two and grilling it) for my brothers bbq birthday soiree and I saved the silk for my medicinal purposes.


(Brother's birthday spread)

Alas, in the U.S. you can not (correct me if you know where please!) find corn silk sold just as that sans the corn unless you go to a TCM pharmacy. So, I take the opportunity to save the silk when I can, and I recommend the same for you. However, it does not last more than two to four weeks at a time fresh in a ziploc bag or other container. You could dry it as well and it would last longer. Corn silk is known as Yu Mi Xu in the TCM world. It is a mild but very effective diuretic used in the treatment of : urinary difficulties, high blood pressure, edema, kidney stones, and gall stones.

How do you prepare it? You would take one cup of the silk and put it in 4 cups of boiling water (you do not want to pack it into the cup, just loosely fit it in to measure). Boil it for 10 mins. Let it cool and strain it and keep it in the fridge. You can drink this 3-4 times a day (1 cup at a time) as a treatment. Forget that overly sweetened cranberry juice they're always recommending for all urinary difficulties!


(Do not fear the black bits as that is just the dry portion of the silk that sticks out of the corn - and is what it would look like in a TCM pharmacy.)





The end product will be a slightly caramely liquid with a definitive sweet corn taste, I like to drink it slightly cool but for people who are experiencing fatigue or digestive difficulties you would drink it room temperature. Enjoy!

Travelling Medicine: Colombia

Summer and it's lovely slow heat has finally gotten me, coupled with a few trips (to New York and Bogota), I have been neglecting the spice doc updates! Well, the trip to Colombia was fantastic as it always is, though this time it was a brief 5 days and I didn't get out to the countryside as I usually do. There will be more travelling medicine updates on Colombia in the years to come since it's somewhere I go periodically to visit family.

I managed to get to one lovely veg & fruit market which was filled to the brim with the stunning variety of produce grown in Colombia. Ohhhh the fruits!! I also happened to meet someone who many years ago came across a book called "Las Recetas Medicinales de la Abuelita" which translates to "Grandmothers Medicinal Recipes". Brilliant and basically my dream book in any and all countries from any and all grandma's! I will share some of that kitchen wisdom as well.

Below are some of the lovely pictures from the market as well as from a few meals I cooked while I was there along with other medicinal & tasty food tidbits. Enjoy!



One of the mango varieties they have there (my grandmother refers to it as a "mangito" but I am on the hunt for the official name - it is a small juicy heavenly mango which you can eat the skin of. Mangoes are particularly good for your digestion and are considered nourishing for your system as a whole. Many fruits tend to be too 'damp and cold' in TCM and mango is an exception, along with papaya. Boiling the leaves of mangoes and drinking the tea can be used to treat cough and congestion.




The lovely little mango when I was half way through it.



An almohabana, nothing medicinal about it, unless you want to nourish your soul for breakfast or at tea time (referred to as onces in Colombia). It is a cheese-filled small chewy light doughy baked good.



The entrance to the grand veg & fruit market.



Mangoes.



Granadillas - good for 'moving your stomach' (aka. constipation) if you are having difficulty in that arena.



Mandarinas.



Papaya, which much like mango, is excellent for your digestion and contains a compound called papain which is a digestive enzyme.



Mango yulima.



Mango de azucar.



Papayuela - a mini papaya which is used to make a dessert - they candy it and it is delectable.



A creamy fruit, pitaya, is good for 'moving the stomach' much like granadilla.



Higos, also known as cacti fruit in the U.S. and can be found in Latino grocery stores.



Curuba, I have had this in juice, it's tart with a slight sweetness.



Tomate de arbol, another wonderful fruit that is referred to as a tomato but tastes more like a crisp tart plum with mango flesh?!



Yuca. It is an excellent substitute for the generic potato and is very nourishing and easy on the digestion. I posted recipes for it on the spice doc facebook page. I learned that the wax you find covering the yuca in stores is placed on there to prevent them from rotting or being eaten by bugs since it is so starchy and delicious.



Another potato (papa pastusa) of which there are many in Colombia. If you ever run into tummy trouble, one of these lovely earthy tubers is a good remedy to feed you back to a balanced digestion.



My favorite of the Colombian tubers: papa criolla - a little yellow potato with a balanced sweetness. It is used to make ajiaco which I will feature on here once winter rolls around again. Potatoes in general are used to reduce all bodily inflammations, and a juice can be made to treat burns topically or to drink for internal ulcers.



This is a beautiful small tuber used in the Boyaca region of Colombia. It looks a little bit like a Jerusalem artichoke.



Colombian corn is one of my favorites, it has a much larger kernel and a slightly starchier crunchier taste to it. The silk can be used to make a mild diuretic decoction if you are suffering from edema or swelling of any kind. There used to be 4,000 varieties of corn in the world, but unfortunately due to companies such as Monsanto (which own the supposed 'intellectual property' rights to the genetically modified corn which most of us eat), many varieties of corn are disappearing. So, when you can, ask for different kinds of corn!



Cilantro - the Colombian variety has a thicker stem and more leafiness. It is used in a majority of the cooking to give flavor to salads, meats, stews, etc. Cilantro is an excellent anti-microbial and also helps to awaken taste buds and fight damp conditions it the body (an example would be phlegm).



Lovely fresh purple garlic, I wrote about the medicinal qualities of garlic here.



Gosh it was nice to see a normal sized chicken, and not only that but a variety in taste and kinds of chicken. Here you see pollo and gallina (pollo is the younger chicken (can be male or female), and gallina is the aged female chicken once it has stopped laying eggs). Gallina has a much more 'campo' (countryside) taste to it, therefore it tastes more like a real chicken and should elicit a feeling of warmth and health, it is mostly used for stewing as it is tougher even though it is tastier. In TCM chicken is particularly good for those who have a weak constitution and need additional nourishment, a gallina would be excellent in this case.



Eggs. Lovely tasty orange yoked eggs. Yes, orange not yellow like you see in the U.S. - this is the sign of a really fresh delicious egg. The color is bright and you can really taste the egginess. Much like the taste of chicken, this taste is just that, eggy. It may not be descriptive enough but you must taste a fresh egg to know what I am saying here. Eggs are excellent for people who are experiencing conditions which create dryness in their bodies for they nourish the bodily fluids. They are also used to treat women in pregnancy or post pregnancy, to nourish the fetus and then after to nourish the mother.



The different cuts of meat in Colombia. The meat is all grass fed and is unbelievably delicious.



There are many varieties of avocados in Colombia. Some are a lighter green color and taste, and others a darker silkier green flesh. They are very good for your skin and also for those that need fats but can not digest other oils.



After all that shopping, I went home to make lunch for my family.



A lovely avocado salad with fresh cilantro, olives, onion, and tomatoes.



Some stir fried corn with garlic and cumin.



Papa criolla boiled then lightly crisped with olive oil and salt.



Lunch.



And last but not least (though there is loads more but that will have to remain for later): panela. Panela is unrefined cane sugar which has been heated in copper pots and takes on a brownish hue. It is used all the time to treat digestive disorders and colds. In fact, while we were there we all came down with a slight flu and made agua de panela tea. You boil a piece of it in water, mix with lemon juice, and drink it to stop a cold from furthering. It is the Colombian flu medicine in the kitchen.

Hibiscus for Hypertension

The flower Hibiscus sabdariffa, also known as flor de Jamaica in Spanish, is not only delicious but also incredibly medicinally beneficial. I drank this flower tea growing up in Thailand as my mother would brew it often when she found out you could purchase it there, having already been exposed to it in Colombia. I vaguely recall the tea as being "good for you" (how often we hear that nowadays), but the reason for it being good for me did not stick in my mind, perhaps because hyptertension, high cholesterol, and water retention are not necessarily something a 15 year old thinks about. Before it was just a delicious chilled rose-colored tea water with a hint of cranberry'esque tartness, now it has taken on new dimensions as I continue to cultivate my knowledge of food as medicine.

Thailand and China are in fact the major producers of hibiscus so it is no wonder I drank it often when I lived in Bangkok. It is thought to be that Thailand produces better quality hibiscus than China, but that Sudan has the best variety, though it's exports are small and rare because of production difficulties. Malaysia became a large producer as well in the 1990's.

The uses for hibiscus are varied as it is used through the world in Asia, Africa, North America, Europe, and South and Latin America. In the U.S. they have primarily toted it as being a drink high in vitamin C. In Thailand they recommend it for the treatment of high cholesterol and hypertension. In South America it is considered good for not only it's high vitamin C properties but also as a mild diuretic and laxative. In Sudan it is used as a cough suppressant and the heated green leaves of the flower are used for cracks and boils on the feet. There are so many uses for this beautiful flower, that I am likely missing some, but will keep this post updated if I learn of more.

While I have been referring to it as flor de Jamaica since I bought it in a Mexican market, you can also find it under the following names (I obtained this information from Wikipedia):

"The roselle is known as the rosella or rosella fruit in Australia. It is also known as meśta/meshta on the Indian subcontinent, Tengamora in Assam, Gongura in Telugu,chin baung in Myanmar, กระเจี๊ยบ'krajeab in Thailand, bissap in Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, Benin and Niger, the Congo and France, dah or dah bleni in other parts of Mali, wonjo in the Gambia, zobo in Nigeria (the Yorubas in Nigeria call the white variety Isapa (pronounced Ishapa)), karkade (كركديه; IPA: ['karkade]) in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan, omutete in Namibia, sorrel in the Caribbean and in Latin America, Flor de Jamaica in Mexico, Saril in Panama, rosela in Indonesia, asam paya or asam susur in Malaysia. In Chinese it is 洛神花 (Luo Shen Hua)"

There are a few different ways to make hibiscus tea, you can boil and steep the flowers for 20 minutes or you can soak them in room temperature water for 2-4 hours (depending on how strong you want it). I chose to do the boil and steep for 20 minutes and the tea turned out delicious, I added 1 large tbspn of rock sugar to sweeten it and I served each glass with a sprig of mint leaf, delectable! Here are the pictures:





The approx. measurement is 1/2 cup flowers to 4 cups of water, but you can play it with according to taste.



Let the flowers steep for 20 minutes.



I used rock sugar which I find to be less "sugary" and more nourshingly sweet rather than sickeningly sweet.



The dried flowers expland and turn back into vibrant flowers in the water.



I put the steeped flower juice into a pitcher so I can keep it in the fridge nice and chilled and ready to drink whenever I want.



A glass of chilled flor de Jamaica juice with a sprig of mint in it.

If you were to primarily use this to treat hypertension, high cholesterol, cystitis, or water retention, you would drink it every day. Because it is a mild diuretic, there aren't the normal dangers associated with diuretics. However, I always recommend that people monitor themselves whenever using anything on a daily basis and it is good to take "medical breaks" from frequent use of any herb or medicinal food.

As a side note, while researching this flower I came across a recipe for Sorrel Punch, which is the fun and alcohol-laden Carribbean version of flor de Jamaica (they just like to have more fun in the Carribbean!). Here is a general recipe (which I have not tried yet but hopefully will attempt this summer), I got it from the blogger eCurry.com:

To make the Sorrel Punch:

Ingredients:

1. 2 cups dried sorrel flowers
2. 1/4 cup fresh gingerroot, peeled and chopped
3. 1 stick cinnamon
4. 4 whole cloves
5. 1 cup sugar
6. 6 cups water
7. 1 1/2 to 2 cups over-proof Jamaican rum (or any of your favorite dark rum)
8. Lemon, lime and orange slices, for garnish

Preparation:

In a large, heat-proof bowl, combine the sorrel, the ginger, the cinnamon stick the cloves and the sugar. Set aside.

Bring the water to a boil and pour it over the sorrel, spices and sugar. Allow the mixture to cool. Cover the bowl and let and let the punch steep for two days.

Strain the mixture through a fine cheesecloth and return the liquid to the bowl.

Stir in the rum. Cover once more and allow the mixture to stand for two more days.

Strain the punch a final time and place it in the refrigerator to chill.

Serve the Sorrel Punch over glasses full of crushed ice, with garnishes of lemon, lime and orange slices. (During the holidays, this is accompanied with a slice of Fruit Cake)


**The lovely hibiscus flower has made it into the news (8.20.2009) as the New York Times displays all the edible flowers being used in cocktails.

Building with Black Beans

Some of you may be happy to know that black beans are medicinal in many interesting ways. One of those ways is something I've mentioned here before and will likely keep mentioning, they are good for your blood. I feel like I may need to explain this whole "good for your blood" thing a bit more as it is becoming a common thread and it may seem a bit vague and possibly vampiric. I've mentioned it in the beef noodle soup, beet, and mochi postings. As you may recall in the beet piece I touched on how Aphrodite was the goddess of beets and that it was said that this was because beets were good for beauty, well blood is your beauty in essence. In fact, it is your essence, and just so happens to be a very important thing to nourish. This does not mean you have to be blood deficient (ie. anemic or anything along those lines) in order to take care of this blood thing. Rather, it's something that you maintain always so that you keep your bases/building blocks stable, healthy, and yes, beautiful (for men & women!) for as long as possible. In TCM blood is considered one of the essential building blocks (in fact, it is likewise in western/modern medicine as well) and it is not just the stuff that oozes out when you cut yourself, but it is the body's sustenance. Your body's daily culinary feast is blood. Therefore, I'd say you need to make that blood pretty good in order for your body to be happy. I won't get too technical beyond this (though it would be fun for me to), but if any of you want more details and more technicality, ask/comment away! Now that we're done with the good for your blood thing..

Back to black beans. They are a part of the legume family and legumes are considered drying and diuretic in general. Each bean has it's separate characteristics within this. The black bean while diuretic, is also warming and sweet in nature, builds fluids and blood in the body, and is supportive of your kidney and reproductive function. Some examples of situations to eat lots of black beans: (during times of blood loss) pre and post menstrual cycle, post-partum, post-surgical; for lower back pain (you would have to eat them for a long while, 3-4x/week minimum); anemia; and infertility. Separately, black bean juice can be used for hoarseness, hot flashes, kidney stones, and urinary difficulties. There are more situations but this is a general outline which should be a good start. You can simply eat black beans to give your blood a boost once in a while, and just because they are tasty!

Black beans are thought to be native to Mexico and appeared some 7,000 years ago. There are a million ways to prepare them and many things to likewise pair them with. I cooked a simple version of black beans last night and paired them with a slow stewed piece of osso bucco (you can pair them with chicken, steak, fish, up to you!). Here is how I did it:

1. Ingredients: 1.5 lbs of dried black beans (this will feed 10 people!), onion, garlic, powdered cumin, fresh oregano (excellent digestive and consequently much like garlic, an anti-microbial), cilantro, bay leaves, salt, pepper, chile morita (you can use serranos, jalapenos, dried chili flakes, up to you), vinegar, 1-2 tomatoes
** I was missing celery and some cured pork fat in my opinion, I strongly suggest you add them (if you do add cured pork fat or celery - you should at the beginning so they stew slowly with the beans)





2. Rinse the beans a few times and make sure there are no pebbles or straggling bits of earth. Soak the beans for a minimum of 4 hours or overnight (covered in 2 inches of water). I soaked them 4 hours and they turned out fine but overnight will likely give them that extra flavor. The idea is to rehydrate them so that they remain intact and therefore nutritious during a slow boil.




3. Since I used dried chile moritas, I had to soak them in water while the beans soak too.




3. Once the beans are done soaking you will notice that the water has turned a beautiful dark color. This is where many cooks/chefs will diverge on theory. Do you throw the water out or not? Some say yes in order to avoid the flatulence factor. The rest (and I am with those) say no, that's hogwash, and the water has harnessed a beautiful dark color and flavor for a reason. I kept the water. Here is how it looks:





4. Next, you start this bountiful bean feast boiling, put the pot on the stove with the soaked beans AND their juice (if the water line is below one inch, please add so there is at least one inch above the bean line), add all the ingredients: crushed garlic (I put in 4-5 cloves, you can add more/less to taste), 2-3 bay leaves, 1 tspn cumin, 1 chopped up onion (it cooks down so it can be a rough chop), 3-4 cilantro stalks chopped up with the root and the leaves, 1 tbspn or more of oregano leaves, salt, pepper, I added a chicken bouillon cube (if you have cured pork fat, no need to add this), 1 chopped up tomato, 3 rehydrated chilis, approx a tbspn of vinegar. Bring to a high boil for 5 mins then reduce to a simmer for at least 2 hrs (3 is a good amount however). Recipes are very hard to translate into what your water is like, your stove is like, etc, and also what your taste is, so please please just play with this, taste, check, then taste and check again! The beans should not get dry ever so add water when they start sucking it all up. You want it somewhat brothy but this is not a black bean soup, it's a black bean dish. Moist but not dry.





5. Your beans should be done in 2-3 hours, you can let them simmer for longer if you want. TASTE them and decide for yourself. Some people like them beanier (more bean roughness), some like them mushier like peas. Up to you. At this point you will want to make what is referred to as the sofrito, which consists of what you started with at the beginning. There are many variations on sofrito much like most recipes, so you can play with this as well. They even sell it in bottles in the Mexican or Latino-catered stores. If you are making it from scratch, mince up 4-5 cloves garlic, 1/2 - 1 onion, 1 tomato, cilantro, a green pepper, olive oil, salt, pepper, and blend - you can add as much as you deem necessary (to taste) to your black beans. If you have leftover sofrito you can freeze it and use another time. Here is a link to a few more recipes for this:

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Sofrito/Detail.aspx

6. During this whole bean thing you should have cooked what you chose to accompany the beans, I cooked rice, a slow simmered osso bucco, and I also added a garnish and sliced avocado. I like a good garnish to bring out the flavors of a dish sometimes using what was originally in the dish. A quick digression here, I am currently reading Bill Buford's book Heat and he mentions that Mario Batali calls this type of garnish a "high note", I quite like this reference as it is indeed the high note of the dish bringing out all the other notes. In Thailand they often do this, adding a bit of raw to a cooked dish whether that is vinegar or a garnish. For this dish, I prepared a garnish of cilantro, vinegar, onion (minced), and sea salt. I added a dollop of that to each plate on top of the beans, along with the rice, bit of meat, and sliced avocado. Oh and of course, I served a hot sauce on the side (Franks, which is vinegary and not so hot).





Other ideas for black bean dishes: black bean salsa in the summer, black bean hummus (I'll definitely do that one next), black bean and corn soup, and on and on. I hope you enjoy some black beans next time you're feeling the need to build yourself up a bit. I woke up feeling great today post black bean feast.

**Medicinal note: some signs and symptoms of "blood deficiency" as per TCM are brittle nails, dry skin, scanty menses (for women), brittle hair, thirst/dry mouth

ADDENDUM RECIPE:

After cooking with the black beans, a few weeks later, I decided to go for it again but this time I did it with Flor de Mayo red beans (similar medicinal value to black beans), I added two smoked pork hocks, corn, carrots (towards the end so they didn't disintegrate), celery, Thai chili's (instead of chipotle since the pork is smokey enough and I wanted more kick) and extra onion - otherwise the recipe is exactly the same as above and you should follow those steps. This I must say turned out amazingly well and I liked it even better, you have to cook the hocks in the beans for at least 3 hours so they get soft (and they impart a lovely smokey flavor), take them out and slice up and place back in the beans, served with sliced avocado and a dollop of yogurt (in lieu of sour cream).