Although fresh wai san looks starchy it
is not as fattening as potatoes. Nowadays, I like to use it as a replacement
for potatoes when I cook ABC soup. Maybe I should try using it in curries. When
buying wai san make sure that you check with the vegetable seller that you are
not buying burdock root because they look similar.
Chinese yam in
Chinese is known as shanyao (山藥) meaning "mountain
medicine" and in Cantonese it
is called wai san (淮山). Wai san is an anti-ageing herb and is
particularly beneficial for the stomach, spleen and lungs as well as to
increase yin energy in the body. It is used mainly for diabetes, pulmonary
tuberculosis, chronic diarrhoea, premature ejaculation, chronic cough and asthma,
morning sickness during pregnancy and vaginal yeast infection. It has properties that can cause it to act like a mild form of estrogen which
can negatively interact with hormone replacement therapy or birth control pills
and is apparently not suitable for breast-feeding mothers. It is also not suitable for people with
constipation.
The dried variety is normally used in
many types of herbal remedies and prepacked soups. It must be soaked for at
least 15 minutes before use to remove the powder.
Ingredients
1 fresh wai san
1 chicken carcass
Put some salt onto the chicken carcass and
rub thoroughly.
Add water and rinse.
See how dirty the water is.
Rinse until the water is clear then blanch
the chicken to remove the scum.
Put the blanched chicken into the boiling water
and cook on high for 1 hour.
Peel the skin and
cut into big chunks.
Do not wet it
before cutting because it gets very slimy once it gets wet making it more and
more difficult to hold.
Add the wai san, yuk
chuk, dates, kei chi and cook on low for another 4 - 5 hours.
Dish up and serve when it is ready.
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