Lotus leaf is a material with medicinal value. Making delicious food has special effects such as clearing heat and detoxifying, cooling and dispelling summer heat, quenching thirst and promoting saliva, and stimulating appetite and digestion. When using it, it is ideal to use fresh lotus leaves. When the lotus leaves are picked, they must be used as soon as possible. If they change color and deteriorate, they must never be used again.
If you pick too many lotus leaves and can't use them all for the time being, you can also dry them. The medicinal value remains unchanged after drying, but the fragrance will be lost. It can also be used in out-of-season.
The drying method is to rinse the fresh lotus leaves with clean water to clean the floating dust on the leaves and dry them in the sun. In order to make things look good and easy to use, you can use bamboo strips, iron wire, etc. to stretch it up during drying. After drying, it will not roll, and the leaves will always remain flat. It can be frozen after drying without losing its medicinal value quickly. It can also be stored in a dry place, but a lot of the active ingredients of lotus leaves will be lost. There is no problem in cooking and decoration, but there is no medical value.
Lotus leaves are a special material in season and the most ideal supplement for making delicious food in summer. Today, we will use fresh lotus leaves to make another seasonal delicacy "Lotus Leaf, Longan, Lotus Seed and Osmanthus Congee". This porridge is a dessert and can be eaten hot or cold after being chilled. It can play an auxiliary role in beautifying, detoxifying, and relieving heat, and is also of great benefit to tonic.
Lotus leaf, longan, lotus seed, osmanthus porridge
By AndreRoberts
Recipe Recommendations
- rice 70 grams
- glutinous rice 30 grams
- longan meat 30 grams
- Dried lotus seeds 40 grams
- qingshui 1500ml
- rock sugar 40 grams
Steps for Lotus leaf, longan, lotus seed, osmanthus porridge
1
Use a sharper knife first.
2
Cut off the dark stalk of the soaked lotus seed.
3
Use the flat-cut part of the toothpick to poke out the lotus seeds.
4
The painstaking efforts of lotus seeds are medicinal materials, which can be dried and retained or not used. The lotus seeds have the effect of dispelling fire and detoxifying.
5
After the water boils, add in rice and glutinous rice and cook together.
6
If the rice is clean, there is no need to wash it.
7
After boiling the rice for 1 hour, add in the lotus seeds and cook for another 30 minutes.
8
Finally, add longan and cook for another 30 minutes. When making porridge, always cook slowly over low heat.
9
When adding longan, put the rock sugar in the pan and boil it.
10
Pour in osmanthus sauce 10 minutes before serving.
11
After the porridge is cooked.
12
Place the fresh lotus leaf button on the surface of the porridge and cook for another 3 minutes.
13
Finally turn off the heat, cover the lid and simmer for 15 minutes, remove the lotus leaf after 15 minutes.
14
Pour the porridge into a container and sprinkle with a little green and red silk to serve on the table. You can also cool it, put it in the refrigerator, and refrigerate it for two hours. Eating the cold porridge will also taste sweet.Lotus leaf, longan, lotus seed, osmanthus porridge Make Tips
1. To make this porridge, it is best to use 60% regular rice and add 40% glutinous rice. Do not use too much rice; cook it until it is thoroughly soft.
2. It is most appropriate to add lotus seeds during the middle stage of cooking. Adding them too early makes them prone to disintegrating; it is best if they taste soft while still appearing as whole seeds.
3. For the longan pulp, it is best to choose dried longans with pits removed, which saves trouble and is convenient.
4. The green and red candied peel strips sprinkled into the porridge at the end are a specialty of Old Beijing. They are made by marinating and drying orange peel and have the effect of relieving coughs and reducing phlegm. If you do not have them at home, you may omit them. You can also make your own secret dried tangerine peel strips: cut fresh orange peel into strips, marinate with a little salt for two hours, then squeeze dry. Add white sugar and a little honey and marinate for a week; the orange peel strips are ready to eat once they become translucent.
Note: The color of porridge cooked with lotus leaves will not be green; it is pale yellow with a faint, fresh fragrance. Any green lotus leaf porridge must have additives added. In the past, alum was mostly used; by placing the lotus leaf on top of the porridge and sprinkling a little alum water, the porridge would quickly turn green. The color is very tempting, but it is toxic, and the state has long explicitly banned the use of alum as a food additive. The main component of alum is aluminum, which inhibits the growth of human brain cells and causes continuous degeneration. Dementia and amnesia in the elderly are related to this, and aluminum products should not be used excessively either.