Old Cucumber is essentially cucumber which has been aged (which explains its name). This ingredient is usually used to make Chinese soup. A friend of mine who was raised in Nepal uses it to make pickles. In traditional Chinese Medicine, this gourd is believed to have ‘yin’ or ‘cooling’ (leung/涼) properties. Hence, it is usually consumed …
Palm sugar is made from the sap of palm trees trunks. In Malaysia, it is probably made from sugar palm (arenga pinnata). The sucrose-rich sap is boiled down to produce a thick brown syrup, poured into a bamboo mould and then hardened into round cylinder blocks. That explains why gula melaka comes in blocks. Taste & …
The leaves are boiled into a decoction to treat asthma, fever, colic, nausea, rheumatism, coughs, urinary tract infection, epilepsy, and convulsion. Upon checking an encyclopaedia of herbal medicine, I found that this herbal plant is used in Indian folk medicine as a digestive remedy. It became mainstream when western medical circle discovered that it contains …