Qing Tang Dessert

I had craving for ginkgo barley dessert today, which used to be prepared at the Chinese restaurant at which I was attached. I specially met my mum for breakfast at the mall, then bough some fresh ginkgo and a pack of soya milk. It is a tedious process to prepare the fresh ginkgo, which had to be cracked, boiled, peeled, bitter stems removed and then boiled again in sugar syrup till soft and sweet. Though time consuming, I prefer these fresh ones than those pre-cooked ones than comes in vacuum packs. Somehow, I think they contain chemical, even if not stated on the packaging. Otherwise, how can they be kept for such a long time, furthermore, without refrigeration?


While the ginkgo nuts were boiling in the sugar syrup, I went to dig out the other ingredients from my pantry. To my dismay, I couldn't find the dried bean curd sheets, which I couldn't remember finishing them before.Not contend with not having my dessert, I dug out other ingredients, to make Qing Tang instead.

The thing about cooking your own is, you get more ingredients than sugared water. Plus, you can add or replace anything you fancy. In this instant, I had to replace sweet potato with pumpkin and the big sago pearls with small ones, since I was using what I had at the time. The end result is more than satisfying, with it's assortment of ingredients. Only thing is, I  missed the chewy big sago pearls, which the small ones could never replace.

One thing to note when preparing this dessert, most ingredients have to be boiled separately as they require different cooking time. For the sago pearls, the residue water is starchy and thus has to be separated. The only two ingredients which do not require cooking are lily bulb and peng da hai  (澎大海). The latter is a seed, which is washed and soaked in water for it to release a thread like membrane. The key to getting a clear soup is to boiled the longans and red dates together, then the soup sweetened according to taste, before mixing in all other cooked ingredients.


Qing Tang, a supposedly cooling dessert, with barley, dried longans, red dates, ginkgo, sago pearls, white fungus, lily bulbs, pumpkin cubes and peng da hai.