Autumn pear paste

emointhekitchen

Love this life and take care of your family! For a person who is not well and the whole family is sleeping and eating, try to cook this autumn pear paste to relieve these unpleasant symptoms.

Autumn pear paste used to be a special medicine in the court, and it only spread among the people after the imperial physician left the court during the Qing Dynasty. Because made from autumn pears in the suburbs and sold in Beijing, it has become a traditional Beijing speciality.

“Compendium of Materia Medica” defines the function of duck pear (or snowflake pear, Chinese pear, nashi pear) as: “Heat of six intestines alive and yin of five intestines ripe”. According to the Chinese pharmacopoeia “Materia Medica”, the pear has the effect of “purifying the heart and lungs, benefiting the large and small intestines, clearing coughs and removing phlegm, clearing the throat and reducing fire, removing irritability and thirst, moistening and removing wind, sobering wine and detoxification”…

According to modern medical research, pears have a curative effect on a dry throat, itching, pain, hoarseness, thick sputum, constipation and red urine in patients with tuberculosis, tracheitis and upper respiratory tract infections. Pear also has the effect of lowering blood pressure, nourishing yin and clearing heat. Patients with high blood pressure, heart disease, hepatitis and cirrhosis of the liver often benefit greatly from eating pears, which can stimulate appetite and aid digestion.

You will need:

6 duck pears,
80 grams of Chinese Zhao dates (Jujube)
150 grams of rock sugar,
20 grams of ginger,
80 ml of honey.

Procedure:

Wash the pears with water, peel the outer skin and squeeze the pear using a juicer. Place the squeezed on a fine gauze and squeeze all of them. Pour the juice into a saucepan and add the chopped dates, ginger and rock sugar. Bring to a boil over medium heat, reduce heat and simmer slowly until thickened. After cooling, filter the pear juice through a strainer and add honey to mix well. Put the filtered pear juice in a bottle, store it in the fridge and mix it with warm boiled water when drinking.

Tips:

When making autumn pear paste, Chinese medicinal herbs such as e.g Monk fruit, Jujube, kudzu root and shellfish can be added as needed, which can play a role in health care.
When cooking pear juice, if you add more dates, the colour of the finished product will be darker and the taste of the dates will overshadow the taste of the pear paste.
The concentration of the autumn pear paste can increase or decrease the boiling time according to personal preference.
Honey should be plain, with no special taste, otherwise, the taste of pear paste will overshadow the taste of honey.
When mixing the honey, the temperature of the pear paste should not be too high, otherwise, it will destroy the nutrients in the honey.
When drinking, take 1 to 2 tablespoons of autumn pear paste and use warm boiled water to open.

Properties of kudzu from the viewpoint of Chinese medicine can be found here( Kudzu )

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