Chrysanthemum Drink
My dear grandma used to boil us this drink, bottle and chill it everytime we went home to see her. It's supposed to be cooling and good for you. I was down with a bad flu recently from the hot and hazy weather and Mom advised me to boil it. It was hard work and it made me appreciate Mom and Grandma's effort so much more!
This are dried chrysanthemum flowers from Hangzhou, China. Hangzhou is supposed to have good chrysanthemum flowers and I recall seeing some pretty high priced ones the last time I was there.
First, I put a few handfuls of chrysanthemum into a pot and brought it to a boil. Mom said to add some rock sugar to taste but I had none so used brown sugar instead. Then turned off the pot to let the flowers soak. After a while, I took them out, strained them and....
Voila! Home-made chrysanthemum drink! I got quite a few bottles out of that lot of flowers. Because my pot was quite small, the first batch was rather thick and bitter. I boiled it about 4 times to get all the goodness of it. If using a bigger pot or less flowers, about 21/2 or 3 times should do the trick! It's lovely chilled!
Just for boo_licious and Eternity...you see those pink and green cat heads behind the bottle? It's black and white pepper shakers from Sarawak! Seeing it in the picture reminded me of how much you both love your cats! :)
2 comments:
Cute kitty pepper shakers, thanks for remembering me!
So easy to make the drink? I must try it as I like it too.
Yes it's surprisingly easy. The hardest part for us was filling it into bottles cos we didn't have a funnel!
Don't soak it too long when you do the first boil. Otherwise it'll turn out really thick and bitter. And it's a lot nicer with rock sugar than brown. My grandma used to add "yew sim" (those little ginseng type roots) too. It gives it a slightly more bitterish and Chinese medicine-type taste!
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