A natural cold remedy like hot and sour coconut soup helps soothe inside and out, cleansing and hydrating and even unblocking sinuses with its vapours; no matter how your taste-buds are suffering, we also guarantee you’ll taste something with this array of delicious spices!
Living under Jamaica’s year-round warm Caribbean sun provides an all-round wellness that many of our northern hemisphere guests don’t benefit from, but we knew we’d moved into the cooler dark seasons when a guest asked our chef Barbara her favourite natural cold remedy.
Out of Many
Barbara’s spicy rich hot and sour coconut soup combines her forebears’ ancestrally favoured cold remedy of chicken soup with recipes from Jamaica’s 150 year old Chinese community and integrates Jamaica’s best natural antibiotic – coconut. Coconuts contain healthy saturated fatty acids including lauric acid which our bodies convert into monolaurin that acts not just as an immune booster but fights a virus like influenza by breaking down their outer lipid shell rendering them inactive.
Nature’s Cold Remedy
If you can’t make it to Jamaica this season, try our natural cold remedy – it’s fusion food at its best!
- 1.2l chicken stock or vegetable stock
- 1 stalk of lemongrass, thinly sliced
- 1 tbsp finely chopped galangal or root ginger
- 4 fresh or freeze-dried kaffir lime leaves, chopped or crumbled
- 2 red chillies, deseeded and finely chopped
- 200g cherry tomatoes, halved
- 1 tbsp lime juice
- 2 tbsp fish sauce (nam pla)
- 200ml carton coconut cream
- A handful of fresh coriander, chopped
- Heat the stock in a large pan.
- Add the lemongrass, galangal or ginger, lime leaves, chillies and simmer for 5 minutes.
- Stir in the tomatoes, lime juice, fish sauce, coconut cream and simmer for 5 minutes more.
- Scatter over the coriander and serve
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