Ginger Red Date Tea for Yang Restoration

Since it's season changing time, it's a good time to look at boosting your immune system.
It's a very simple tea with ingredients that have benefits to boosting different aspects of your body.
If you just read about the ingredients and what's it good for, it honestly seems like something you can drink every once in a while to boost your immune system. But with traditional Chinese medicine, there's a balance to everything so you don't want to over do it either.

My aunt in HK sent me specific date and time to drink this tea as it's the best time to restore balance to the body.
Specifically from Mar 18-22 before 11am every day.
Maybe it's a mental thing but my mom has friends that claim it works and helped boost immune system the years they drink this.
Doesn't hurt to try :)

Ginger Red Date Tea

For 1 cup

Ingredients

• 2 thin slices of ginger
• 1 large Red Date or 2 small Red Dates (seedless)
• 1/2 tsp Brown Sugar
• 1.25 Cup of Water

Directions

1. Wash and cut 2 thin slices of ginger
2. Remove seed from the red date (it's a must! or buy seedless)
3. Add all ingredients to a pot and bring to light boil
4. Turn off heat immediately and let it steep for 10 mins

And you're done :)

Super easy if you have seedless red dates already so you only have to put everything together and heat it up.

If this is too spicy for you, add a little more brown sugar.

Citrus Honey Duck Breast in less then 20 mins

One of the tricks to a quick meal is to take advantage of a well stock pantry and fridge!

In this case, I'm using the Citrus Honey Tea I always have in the fridge. Honestly it's pretty similar to a jam but it's used to make tea.
With the help with the tea, I can make this dish without marinating in advance. Great when you need to whip up something fast.

Please note, this cooks in less then 15 mins because my duck breast has been unfrozen and I like mine cooked to medium. Just like steak, you do NOT need to cook duck all the way. It's best served medium.

Citrus Honey Duck Breast in 15 mins

Servings: 2 people Prep Time: 3 mins Cook Time: 15 mins

Ingredients

• 2 Duck Breast (unfrozen in fridge overnight)
• 2 tbsp Citrus Honey Tea

Directions

1. Take the breast out of the packaging and wash it.
2. Pat it dry and score the skin in a crisscross pattern.
3. Heat a non-stick pan to medium and put the skin side down.
4. Cook out the oil!!! This is a very important step as duck is very oily, it's very important to cook out as much oil as possible. I let it cook on this side for 5 mins and then pour out the oil.
5. After you pour out the oil, let it cook another min to cook out a bit more oil.
6. Once there's a bit of oil on the pan, flip to cook the meat side for 5 mins.
7. Depending on how flat or round your duck is, you might want to stand it up and cook it on each of the sides for 2 min each if it's very round.
8. Plate the duck breast and brush it with the Citrus Honey Tea on all sides.
9. Let it sit for a couple of mins before you cut and eat.

After trying to cook duck with this sauce in different ways, I found the best way is to actually apply the tea after it's cooked if you're cooking it in a pan.

If you're using cast iron and after you sear you're planning on baking the duck, then brush on the tea before you put it in the oven! That creates the best result if you're searing and baking.

Keep the duck fat to saute veggies! It's very tasty.

Enjoy your mean in 20.

Red Date Tea (紅棗水)

Dried Red Dates (紅棗) are commonly used in Chinese soups so it's always in the pantry. Besides soup, I like to make it into tea.
I find it especially helpful after that time of month or when I feel light headed and I'm looking pale (usually due to lack of sleep and my blood pressure is lower then normal).
My Chinese Dr recommended it to me when he noticed how pale I was and after a week of drinking this tea, I really did feel better and look normal rather then pale.

According to Chinese medicine, red date helps strengthens your blood. Since I have poor blood circulation and low blood pressure, he recommends using this tea to strengthen my blood.

Red Date is herbal so it's safe for anyone to drink and it's sweet!
You can also easily buy it from Chinese supermarkets or the Chinese seafood and dried medicine stores. There's different grades of Red Dates but I honestly haven't notice a difference myself.
If you don't have much time, get seedless Red Dates.
If you have the time, then it doesn't matter but removing the seeds is time consuming as the meat sticks to the seed.
The picture to the right is my current bag of Red Dates. I brought it because it's sealed in 4 packages
inside so I don't have to worry about the storage of the remaining Red Dates as much. Yes it's wasteful but I don't use it enough to justify getting 1 big package.



Why remove the seed? This is a bit harder for me to explain. In Chinese Medicine, they believe in balance in your body for hot and cold. It is said that the seed in the Red Date will contribute to the "hot" in a bad way and can throw off you off balance so you should remove the seeds.



How to Remove the Seed?
They easiest way I found was to cut a slit along the long side of the Red Date.
I cut all the way to the seed and dig in.
I use my knife to scrape the side of the seed to keep as much of the meat as possible in the date.
Just scrape on all sides and pull the seed out.

Red Date Tea

Makes 5 cups of tea Prep Time: 0 to 20 mins Cook Time: 10 mins

Ingredients

• About 5 cups of water (I fill my Britta Jar once and use all the water there)
• 10-15 Dried Red Dates (My mom uses even more but I find this to be the minimum amount, the more you use the sweeter and more potent it is!)

Directions

1. Boil the water in a pot.
2. Once it's boiling, add in the seedless Red Dates.
3. Boil for 10 mins.
4. Let it simmer for about half an hour.

And it's ready to drink :)
You'll get a nice bit jar of tea that you can drink warm or cold.

Honey Ginger Tea

The first time I had Ginger tea was in HK after eating Hairy Crab....
Hairy Crab is considered to be very cold and many people are actually allergic to it.
I didn't know I was because it was my first time eating it...
So I felt really super sick after....surprisingly the Ginger Tea helped push back the ache for a time period until my allergic reaction broke out....

Now I drink when my tummy hurts and it helps it feel better (I think some people drink Ginger Ale and it does the same thing...but this is healthier :))

Also, according to Chinese Hot/Cold theory, since Ginger "hot/warm" it's good when you're starting to get sick with a cold too.

It's really super simple to make as long as you have ginger at home...(since I'm Chinese I always have ginger at home)

Ingredients
2 slices of ginger (medium size)
1 Mug of water (A little bit more since you'll loose some to steam)
~ 1 tsp honey or to your taste

Cut 2 slides of ginger from the root, fairly thin is fine.

Put it in a pot/kettle and fill it with your cup of water and bring the water to boil.

Boil for ~30secs and turn off the stovetop.
Let it sit there and steep for about 10 mins.



Add about 1 tsp of Honey into your cup before you pour your tea into the cup.

Stir and you're ready to drink :)

I hope it helps