Seaweed & miso soup

Since I am pregnant, I've been revisiting the pregnancy and postpartum soups in my repertoire.

I was introduced to Miyeok Guk 미역국, a traditional Korean soup eaten on birthdays and postpartum, by my dear friends celebrating their birthdays and when I had my daughter. This is a deceptively simple, powerhouse medicinal soup! Seaweed is nutrient-dense superfood packed with calcium, vitamins A, B-12, C, K, iodine, potassium, chlorophyll, soluble fiber, helps to regulate estrogen/estradiol, and on top of that it binds to heavy metals in the intestines and helps to leach them out of your system. Yay for seaweed! (And yes, I know Fukushima has altered the radiation content in the Pacific and iodine which is abundant in seaweed binds to radiation. But I figure, it's all getting flushed out. Literally. Atlantic seaweed is harder to source and frankly, the US specialty companies that do so charge ridiculous prices. We do what we can and make compromises.)

There are dozens of varieties of edible seaweed. You should choose wakame (which I know is a transliteration of Japanese not Korean) or Miyeok (see, Korean). Though I have very rusty, phonetic reading ability in Hangul | Korean (courtesy of free language class at the Korean Cultural Center in LA way way back--did I mention I also got a BA in linguistics and had/have an affinity for languages?), I lack comprehension. So whenever I am in doubt, I look at the picture and make sure there is a bowl of soup on the label.

I start with Junghee's mom's recipe which she shared with my mom after I gave birth. I use other non-traditional nutrient-dense ingredients to amp up the nutritional profile. Miso adds probiotics (and if you really want to go the extra mile, add GMO-free organic natto for the Vitamin K2). I stopped eating soybeans some years ago because of the phyto-estrogens (big deal for women of childbearing age) and the GMO issue.  Every now and then I will make an exception for organic, fermented soybeans.  So this is another one of my exceptional recipe for fermented soybeans. Read the labels for miso & natto carefully to make sure it's organic, GMO-free, MSG-free and is naturally fermented with koji cultures (rice or barley malt). Natto has a very strong challenging flavor so you may want to omit if you don't like stinky ferments.  

You can use a bone broth base to have a more rich soup base and/or use fish sauce and dried bonito flakes (be sure it doesn't have MSG though!)  If you are using shellfish, the juice from the shellfish will also enrich the soup base. My favorite is clams because they are high in iron and with the seaweed combine to make a blood building/fortifying soup that is perfect for moon cycles, pregnancy, postpartum, and post-surgery. This has been a great boost for me when I start feeling fatigued from the crazy things pregnancy does to one's body. I try to eat it at least once a week or so. When I am too busy to get fresh clams, I used canned. I know. Totally not as good, but way easier to store and have on hand in the pantry. (note 1/15/2017 I've since discovered frozen clams at Whole Foods. Infinitely better than canned!)

This is one of my daughter's favorite soups. Once when she was a toddler, she ate a huge adult sized portion of it. And then at bedtime she puked black-green goop all over the bed which I had the parental sixth sense ability to catch in my hands. Mostly. Good times.

Ingredients

• ~1 cup dried Miyeok/Wakame seaweed 
• toasted sesame oil
• garlic (optional)
• sea salt
• 8 cups water or bone broth
• cubed beef steak, whole cleaned clams (shell on), canned clams including juice (choose an additive-free one), shellfish, and/or cubed, organic/GMO-free soft tofu
• 1-2 tbs of Red Boat fish sauce and/or bonito flakes (make sure it's additive-free)
• 2 tbs of organic, GMO-free miso to taste
• organic, GMO-free natto (optional)

Directions

1.  Soak seaweed in water for 10 min in filtered water.  Drain. Massage in sesame oil. Use kitchen shears and cut into bite sized pieces.
2.  Add sesame oil to pot and saute seaweed for 1 min.  Add garlic (if u want) until it warms up.  
3. Add beef if using and sauté for a few minutes.
4. Add bone broth or water, fish sauce and/or bonito and bring to a low boil. 
5. Add shellfish if using and low boil until just cooked--the clams open up (~5 minutes).
6. Add tofu if using until it's hot.
7. Turn off stove.  Add 1-2 tbs miso and natto if using.  Sea salt to taste. Serve.

Nước rau má | Yo Mama's pennywort juice (Gotu Kola)

Word to Yo Mutha

Uống nước nhớ nguồn

Drink water, remember the source

Ơn Nghĩa Sinh Thãnh by my favorite Viet singer Hoàng Lan

In honor of Mother's Day, I'm posting a recipe for a beverage that your mother approved.

Rau má | "mother's herb"*--alias Centella asiatica, pennywort, gotu kola/mandukaparni (Ayurvedic), 崩大碗 ("chipped big bowl" TCM) not Lei Gong Teng/雷公藤 (important correction below)**  is a powerful herbal cure-all that has been called the "elixir of life."  (The many other names of pennywort throughout Asia.)

Apart from wound healing, the herb is recommended for the treatment of various skin conditions such as leprosy, lupus, varicose ulcers, eczema, psoriasis, diarrhoea, fever, amenorrhea, diseases of the female genitourinary tract and also for relieving anxiety and improving cognition. [Source]

"yo mama's so wise that Yoda calls her for advice"

Centella asiatica (rau má , pennywort, lei gong teng, gotu kola)

Influenced by Chinese and Ayurvedic medicine, in Viet folk medicine--which is based on humoral theory--the body is governed by gió mát (âm)|cooling winds (yin) and gió nóng (duơng)|hot winds (yang) humors.  In this folk medicine belief and practices, food is medicinal and is governed by these properties.  If your body is suffering from too much yang-heat, you consume yin-cooling foods and drinks to balance yourself to homeostasis.

Nước rau má is a popular juice made from a wetland medicinal herb native to Asia and is widely used in Ayurvedic, Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and South African/Madagascar healing modalities.  It is considered a cooling drink in thuốc Nam | Viet folk medicine (versus thuốc Bắc or Chinese medicine).  

Rich with chlorophyll, vitamins, and minerals, rau má is mild adaptogen, is mildly antibacterial, anti-viral, anti-inflammatory, anti-ulcerogenic, anxiolytic, a cerebral tonic, a circulatory stimulant, a diuretic, nervine and vulnerary.  It's being researched as a potent anti-cancer medicine.

Active ingredients are asiaticoside (a triterpene glycoside) (triterpenoid), brahmoside and brahminoside (both saponin glycosides), madecassoside (a glycoside with strong anti-inflammatory properties), madecassic acid, thiamine, riboflavin, pyridoxine, vitamin K, asparate, glutamate, serine, threonine, alanine, lysine, histidine, magnesium, calcium and sodium. ... high concentration of thiamine (vitamin B1), riboflavin (vitamin B2) and pyridoxine (vitamin B6).  (Source)

Though I've drank it throughout my life, I first
 encountered its folk medicinal purpose when I was doing ethnographic fieldwork in Vietnam in 2000.  Between my daily cà-phê sữa đá, chronic dehydration, and the tropical heat, inevitably I started to experience a mild urinary tract infection considered nóng | hot-yang in the the Viet folk system. Though I had brought all purpose international travel antibiotics (this is back when antibiotics were given out like candy), I was reluctant to use them.  My aunty (a real aunty, not the fictive kin that white anthropologists love to claim adopted them, not understanding that in kin-relational languages lacking a 2nd person pronoun like "YOU", if one is not kin, one doesn't exist; and since one can't not exist, one is assigned a kinship pronoun, not adopted.  If one was really adopted, one would have family obligations like getting random phone calls every few weeks to fix this that and the other and to cook/buy/make/deliver this that and the other for such and such relation even when one lives 500 miles away.  Not that I mind because I adore my phamily.  Ahem)--So my aunty ran out to the market and returned with a bunch of rau má.  With one glass, the infection was gone.

"

Shaken, not shtirred.

The other week, as I was suffering from some "hot wind" (...) and the heat wave, my MIL picked up some rau má at Vietnamese market for me.  The leaf is astringent tasting and the juice is not pleasant in and of itself. Typically this is served with a grip of sugar to counter the astringency.  Since I am low to no sugar, my MIL suggested coconut water as complementary cooling liquid.

Lacking fancier juice extraction equipment I used my handy dandy Cuisinart immersion blender (bought on clearance from Sur le table) to pulverise it with some water and then used a nut bag to strain it.  This left a little fine debris so next time I would use a cheesecloth instead.  I tried some as a straight shot.  Regretted it.  Gave some to my husband as a straight shot because I like to share the joy.  Haha.  Wish I took a photo of his face the moment it hit his tongue.  Tried some with Stannard Farms organic grade B maple syrup.  Then I remembered I had some with some Trader Joe's coconut water which was a vast improvement.  (I also have some fresh coconuts that I froze in the deep freeze--note: do not freeze coconuts ever again--but didn't have the patience to partially defrost them and macguyver a filtering system so that the semi cracked coconut didn't melt everywhere.) Then for the remainder, I just poured it into my daily, organic herbal infusion of red raspberry leaves, stinging nettle and red clover with a teaspoon of himalayan sea salt.  It's really quite uh, special.  The things one gets used to...  After lingering for a week and a half despite cranberry juice, bearberry/cranberry/mannose extract supplements up the wazoo (I haven't done antibiotics in over 14 yrs), my "hot wind" cleared up with 2 days of drinking rau má.

I recommend using coconut water to blend the rau má, fresh if you can source the young coconuts or use your preferred brand of the bottled/boxed kind.  The more coconut water you add, the more you dilute the astringency.

We've become so accustomed in our (post-) modern, consumer-driven society to consuming our nutrients in pill form as concentrated, isolated elements.  This is not how our biological systems optimally function.  It is best to get our nutrients from whole foods.  Prepared correctly within its cultural context/foodways, medicinal herbs are an excellent way to obtain these nutrients.  

Before you run off and start adding this to your chia-goji-quinoa-dragon fruit-blue green algae-superfood smoothie, keep in mind: Like any medicinal plant, pennywort is best to drink in moderation and not on a ongoing, daily basis. There is conflicting info about using this herb during pregnancy and breastfeeding mostly because no one has officially studied its use in mothers (this is true of most herbal remedies even when folk medicinal practices do condone it during the childbearing year).  Use your own common sense.

Straight up now tell me do you want to love me forever?  Woah oh oh! Or are you just having fun?

Word to the Mutha!

Aaaaaaand... I couldn't resist Mr. T's rap about yo mama.

*I'm not clear on the etymological/ethnobotanical origins of Rau má which translates as "mother's herb".  Some Western herbalists purport that it aids in breastfeeding.  I haven't heard of any mother-specific uses in Viet folk medicine, but then I've never investigated it.

** I've been informed by a careful reader that Lei Gong Gen | Thunder God Vine is actually a different TCM plant Tripterygium wilfordii that is mistakenly attributed as Pennywort and is toxic if not consumed properly.  Thanks, Hai for catching that!