Sweet Potato Ginger Dessert Soup

Welcome to our weekly Foodie Friday link up! I’m linking up with Montana from Pretty Lil Mudder, Annmarie from the Fit Foodie Mama, Emily from Whatever Floats Your Oats, Esther from Chocolate Runner Girl, and Cassandra from Powered By Bling, to create awesome healthy recipes each week! Today’s theme = Heritage Appreciation! Make sure you hop around to check out all the amazing recipes in this link up and feel free to add your recipes as well!

For the first 23-ish years of my life, I never felt like I was part of the minority (it’s hard to when your high school is >80% Asian and over half your college is as well)….But after I moved across the country and Kosina and I found ourselves in pictures for almost every school event, no matter how brief our attendance, we came to the conclusion that we were being tailed by the school photographer because we are the diversity here.

I made up 20% of the Asian population in the town I moved away from! :O Save for the pictures from International Festival and Follies, every picture she got of me had me scarfing down food or  surrounded by food. I was even asked last year to be in a set of pictures for a brochure to ask people to donate to a scholarship fund! But they’re just using my face to solicit monies, because I get absolutely no part of this scholarship fund. :'(. :[! I find this grossly unfair, but life in general is pretty unfair, so I’ve learned to live with it.)

What? What was that? You thought I was kidding about always being associated with food, didn’t you!?

I’m a total foodmonger, not gonna lie! ;O

I love food, but I’m sure we’re all well aware of that by now.

That being said, I get a lot of the following when I’m out here:
x: Where are you from?
F: California!
x: Were you born here?
F: Well, I was born and raised in the bay area.
x: What’s your nationality?
F: Um, United States?
x: No, but where did your parents meet?
F: Canadia*–I mean…Canada.
x: What about before that?
F: Hong Kong.
_{*This is because I started calling Canada “Canadia” about a decade ago to poke fun at my friend Nathan, and it’s kinda stuck on now. Go figure.}

I rarely stretch it out for that long unless I really think they’re being extremely nosy. People are usually pretty polite about it. However, I find it absolutely hilarious that I’ve been told that I “speak very good English.” To which I responded, “Thank you! That’s great to hear, since I was born and raised here! :D” (I speak English very well, thank you very much!) A more fun idea would have been to use my fake fob accent to respond, but of course, great ideas always hit me long after the opportunity’s left. Long story short, I am in fact Chinese, although I invariably respond that my parents are from Hong Kong when people ask.

My dad is actually from Guangzhou, which is the predominantly Cantonese-speaking region of China…but I don’t like to associate myself with mainland China because I’m not taking the fact that they’re trying to murder my native dialect very well. (I learned Cantonese and English at the same time.) Sadly, I don’t know how to make as many Chinese dishes as I would like, but this theme has kinda inspired me to go learn from my parents/family friends as much as possible!

Since I already covered a quintessential Hong Kong favorite [蛋塔 (Egg Tarts)] many moons ago, I figured I’d do a dessert soup! :O 蕃薯糖水 literally translates to “sweet potato sugar water,” hence why we translate it to “dessert soup” instead. :P Dessert soups are a Cantonese specialty of sorts in that no other region of China really does them.

There are a bunch of different varieties/types that I will hopefully get to making in the near future. I decreased the amount of sugar in this because I’m not a fan of super-super sweet things, but if you’d like, add more to taste! The recipe traditionally uses slab sugar, but you can sub with coconut or brown sugar, honey…etc. The taste might be a bit different, but you get pretty much the same end-product! Usually, dried red dates are added to this dessert soup as well, but I subbed in dried longan (sent to me by the parental units! <3) because there are no shops that sell dried red dates within a 3-4 hour radius. Gotta work with what you’ve got!

蕃薯糖水 (Sweet Potato Ginger Dessert Soup)

Ingredients:

• 2 large sweet potatoes, cubed
• 7 cups water
• 2 in. piece of fresh ginger, skinned + sliced
• 3 tbsp organic coconut palm sugar
• dried longan

Instructions:

1. Pour the water into a large pot and bring to a boil.
2. Add the sweet potatoes and ginger, and lower the heat.
3. Simmer for ~15 minutes, until sweet potatoes have softened.
4. Stir in the coconut sugar until it dissolves.
5. Serve hot!

Other HK-style foods/drinks!

• Jasmine Milk Tea
• Honey Milk Tea
• 炸馒头 (Fried Mantou)
• 脆皮炸鲜奶 (Fried Coconut Milk)
• Peanut Milk Toast

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• Farrah | blog | instagram | pinterest | twitter | bloglovin’
• Montana | blog | facebook | instagram | pinterest | twitter | bloglovin’
• Annmarie | blog | facebook | instagram | pinterest | twitter | bloglovin’
• Emily | blog | instagram | pinterest | twitter | bloglovin’
• Esther | blog | facebook | instagram | pinterest | twitter | bloglovin’
• Cassandra | blog | facebook | instagram | pinterest | twitter | bloglovin’

 Join us next week for Crockpot Meals!