After fetching Cass from kindy just now, I brought the MIL to a nearby plant nursery to get some ‘chau choe’ or stink grass. She wanted to dish out a popular Hong Kong dessert consisting of mung beans + stink grass + shredded kombu seaweed.   This Hong Kong sweet soup concoction is well known to expel heat and toxins from the body.

I do not know how the stinky grass got its moniker  but it ain’t stinky at all. Well, at least not to us. In fact, we find the smell very sharp yet fragrant.  Cass kept telling me that the stink grass smelled like pandan leaves.   My kids love the taste of it, surprisingly. I think it is an acquired taste as many years ago, they did not quite like the smell of it.

I am unable to snap a sharp and nice picture of our mung bean sweet soup,  except for this one when it was still boiling in the pot.

This is the healthy mung bean + stink grass + kombu seaweed sweet soup that the MIL boiled today.  The picture is however googled and copied from Christine’s Recipe’s blog:

The is the kombu seaweed.  You will need to soak the dried kombu to soften it before slicing it with a knife into shreds . Amount used is optional and up to individual.

The stink grass. One of our favorite aromatic and healthy herbs to prepare ‘tong sui’ (sweet soup).  My mil used about 10 sprigs to boil a big pot of mung beans.

Mung beans are rich in the following nutrients:
• protein
• vitamin C
• folic acid or folate
• iron
• zinc
• potassium
• magnesium
• copper
• manganese
• phosphorus
• thiamine

Mung beans are also high in fibre, low in saturated fat, low in sodium, and contain no cholesterol. Because of the wide range of nutrients contained in mung beans, they offer a whole host of health benefits for the immune system, the metabolism, the heart and other organs, cell growth, protection against free radicals, and diseases such as cancer and diabetes.

The Chinese believe that mung beans or green beans can expel heat, prevent heat stroke, clear skin, clear acne and clear toxins from the body and blood.

Mung beans are inexpensive and very nutritious. Instead of wolfing down a packet of nasi lemak for breakfast or lunch, try to boil a pot of mung bean sweet soup and have it instead.  You can store the excess sweet soup in a container and keep it in the fridge.  It tastes even more refreshing when eaten chilled.