A very popular Cantonese style dessert made with silky, thin beancurd sheets of soy along with thin strings of egg and ginkgo nuts, all flavoured with a sugar syrup “sweet soup.”
Ingredients ( Serve 5 ~ 6 )
- 150 g Dried Bean Curd Sheet
- 40 g Ginkgo Nuts
- 20 g Chinese Barley
- 8 Red Date
- 8 Eggs
- 1700 ml Water
- 150 g Rock Sugar
Preparation
1. Take the eggs from refrigerator and let it in room temperature for a while.
2. Place ginkgo nuts in oven, bake 160℃ for 15 minutes. Use mortar and pestle to crush the shell of ginkgo when it is still hot. You can easily remove the brown membrane when it is still hot. Cut ginkgo into half and remove the mature embryo, too.
3.Put the barley, ginkgo nuts and Chinese red dates into boiling water. Cook over medium heat, covered, about 10 minutes. Drained well.
4. Use your push pin to gently poke a hole into the larger end of your egg carefully. I used a slight twisting action with light pressure to get the push pin in. Boil eggs in cold water, bring it to a boil until cooked. Remove from saucepan and soak in cool water. Once cooled, crack the eggs and peel from the larger end first. The shell should easily peel away.
5. In a large pot, add 1700 ml water, gingko nuts, cooked barley, Chinese red dates, shelled eggs and rock sugar. Simmer for 30 minutes until barleys are softened. Add dried bean curd, and simmer 10 ~15 minutes until it breaks into pieces, or cook until it turns into soy-milk-like mixture. After adding beancurd, it easily spills over the stove. Be careful. The cooking time depends on how you like it. If you like to have both soy-milk-like mixture and bean curd piece, add half of the dried bean curd and cook it until smooth, then add the another half.
Reminder
- Be careful that ginkgo nuts are potentially toxic when uncooked and should not be taken ‘too much’ at a time. Yet don’t be threatened and stop considering it as a food. Adults not more than 15 with a day. Children not more than 5. It is not suitable for pregnant women.
- It may be more convenient to buy the ginkgo nuts shelled, which are usually vacuum-packed or canned. Despite of that convenience, I still prefer them in shells with which their fresh flavours are intact.
