← Nouns Cooking · Chinese

Ingredients

• 6 smoked dried plums (wu mei), about 20 g
• 40 g Dried hawthorn slices (shan zha)
• 1 piece Dried tangerine peel (chenpi) (optional)
• 1.5 l Water
• 100 g rock sugar or brown sugar, to taste
• Ice

Method

1. Rinse the plums, hawthorn and tangerine peel under running water, then soak them in the 1.5 litres of water in a pot for 30 min.
2. Bring the pot to the boil, then cover and simmer over low heat for 40 min, until the liquid is a deep reddish-brown.
3. Add the sugar and stir until dissolved. Taste: it should be tart, sweet and a little smoky. Add more sugar if you like.
4. Leave to cool, strain into a jug and chill for at least 2 hours. Serve over ice.

Tips

• Find wu mei and dried hawthorn at Chinese grocers or herbal shops; they are often sold together as a suanmeitang pack, sometimes with liquorice root and osmanthus.
• Keeps for 3 days in the fridge; discard if it turns cloudy or fizzy.

Sources

Written in our own words after cross-checking these recipes:

Greedy Girl Gourmet Pressure Cook Recipes The Woks of Life