It’s the hottest summer day of the year again, and in the face of an increasingly waning appetite, a bowl of cool and refreshing Soviet-style mung bean soup must be an excellent choice to whet your taste buds. A bowl of mung bean soup will relieve the heat and improve your appetite. Therefore, many restaurants offer this mung bean soup as a pre-dinner snack, which is really thoughtful.
Making an authentic bowl of Soviet-style mung bean soup at home is not complicated. Wash the mung beans and glutinous rice separately, soak them, steam them in a steamer, take them out and let them cool for later use. Drop a little mint essence into cold boiled water, pour it into a container and put it in the refrigerator for later use. For those who are more sophisticated, you can also take mint leaves and boil them carefully in clean water. After filtering out the impurities in the mint water, cool it fully. Those eye-catching red and green silk threads, winter melon soup, kumquats, candied dates, etc. should be available at any Caizhizhai or dried fruit shop. Just weigh a few taels of each when you pass by. Enough for mung bean soup all summer long.
After all the ingredients are prepared, the combination depends entirely on the diners’ personal preferences. Like me, I only love that portion of glutinous rice. Whenever I make mung bean soup at home, I feel like I am trying my best to dig the glutinous rice into the bowl. But when the spoon reaches the side of the mung beans, I scoop out half of it politely. Spoon, more than ten pieces, just click on it. As for those red and green silk threads, you don’t have to use them. Then pour a full bowl of mint water. The glutinous rice will be crystal clear and the mung beans will be bright green. Just looking at it is pleasing to the eye. Of course, this will inevitably lead to laughter and scolding. It’s like eating a bowl of glutinous rice porridge, but it’s hard to buy yourself a happy meal!
In the summer of my childhood, I was always surrounded by bowls of Soviet-style mung bean soup. The sun was shining brightly at noon, and I didn't have much appetite to eat, so I quickly went to the refrigerator and took out bottles and cans, and made a bowl of mung bean soup for lunch. When you are reviewing your homework in the afternoon and are swaying and eager to meet Zhou Gong, a bowl of refreshing mung bean soup is also a " sharp weapon " to refresh your mind. Occasionally, friends come to play together. When they are so crazy that they are sweating profusely, they even have to share the sweetness of mung bean soup.
My mother is a loyal fan of mung bean soup. On weekdays, her bowl of mung bean soup is enough to equal three or four bowls of mine. I heard from my mother that my grandfather, whom I had never met, used to sell candied fruits in the town. Every summer, he would make some mint candy water and sell it in front of my mother’s school. In the old days, when we basically relied on cattail fans and bamboo couches to spend the summer, a cup of refreshing mint water was a favorite for children on their way home from school. You pay a penny for a cup. Even though there is nothing in it except mint essence and white sugar, you can feel happy for a long time. Mother took full advantage of her family. Not only did she enjoy unlimited cup refills, she could also take the opportunity to grab a few pieces of winter melon candies and a few large candied dates to satisfy her cravings. As a result, my mother still likes to add more candied fruits to her mung bean soup bowl, which is probably a reminiscence of her childhood.
Nowadays, many mung bean soups sold in sweet shops have ingenious additions of new flavors, such as glutinous rice dumplings, taro balls, fruit particles, etc. I seemed to be dissatisfied with every new ingredient, but my mother was very happy to accept these new things. We bought tapioca flour online and poured taro balls at home, but after all, we were not professional enough, and the taro balls we made were In terms of appearance and taste, they were both unsatisfactory compared to the ones in the store, so I gave up.
It’s time to pick the mung beans, wash the glutinous rice, wait for the water in the pot to boil, steam it, and make a bowl of mung bean soup to cool down and replenish energy, which is a good way to cope with the hottest weather of the year. Show your respect!