Chinamaxxing your food

Picking up from last week’s article on my recent obsession with the traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) way of eating and seeing the seasons, this week, I will show you how to incorporate food valued in Chinese cuisine into your daily meals.

Thanks to the many Chinese migrants who made their way to our islands, many of these vegetables have found their way onto our tables and into our backyards.

Filipino ingredients valued in Chinese medicine

Ampalaya (bitter melon)

This is actually originally a Chinese/South Asian vegetable, too, but it’s worth flagging because it sits at the center of both cuisines for the same reason.

It’s a sour vegetable widely used in salads, stir-fries, and curries, known for its medicinal properties, particularly around blood sugar. In TCM terms, bitter melon is a textbook fire-element food—think bitter taste and cooling nature. It’s used to “clear heat,” which is exactly why Cantonese cooking pairs it with pork bone soup in summer.

Kangkong (water spinach)

A Southeast Asian aquatic green that Cantonese and other Southern Chinese cooking took on almost wholesale (stir-fried with garlic/fermented bean curd, or with belacan/shrimp paste). It’s valued because it’s cooling, fast-growing, and thrives in the same wet-tropical growing conditions across the South China Sea/Southeast Asia trade routes.

Sayote (chayote)

A New World squash that entered Chinese cooking through the same Philippine/Southeast Asian trade circuits, it’s valued in Cantonese stir-fries for being mild, watery, and neutral—the kind of “cooling, easy-on-the-digestion” vegetable prized in hot climates.

Monggo (mung bean)

This one is Chinese through and through. Mung beans (绿豆, lǜ dòu) are one of the most classic “cooling” foods in Chinese medicine—used for centuries in summer soups and mung bean sweet soup (绿豆汤),specifically to relieve heat exhaustion and detox.

The Filipino ginisang monggo (sautéed mung bean stew) is a direct descendant of Chinese mung bean cooking, adapted with local touches like malunggay leaves and pork.

Red monggo

Usually refers to azuki/adzuki beans (hóng dòu) in the Philippines, red monggo is sometimes just a redder mung bean variety.

Red beans are a blood-nourishing food in TCM—used in sweet soups (red bean soup) and believed to support the heart and aid circulation, tied to the color-red-to-fire-element association. Their use in sweet desserts (red bean paste and halo-halo’s monggo variants, for example) mirrors Chinese red bean desserts almost exactly.

Kundol (winter melon/wax gourd)

Extremely significant in Chinese cooking, dōng guā is a staple in Cantonese soups. Most famously, the winter melon soup is served in the hollowed-out gourd itself as a banquet centerpiece.

In TCM, it’s considered strongly cooling and diuretic, used to reduce “heat” and swelling, and to support the lungs and spleen. The Filipino ginisang kundol tradition traces directly back to this.

Kalabasa (squash/pumpkin)

Squash is a New World crop (via the Spanish/Manila galleon trade) that both Filipino and Chinese cooking adopted afterward. In Chinese kitchens, pumpkin (nán guā) got slotted into the earth-element category—sweet-tasting, warming, and spleen-supporting.

Tenga ng daga (wood ear mushroom)

Found in pancit and chopsuey, this valued fungus even has its own unforgettable Filipino name. Classified as a neutral food, it is said to work on the lung, stomach, and large intestine meridians.

Wood ear mushroom is also considered gentle enough to eat regularly without disturbing the body’s balance, which is why it shows up so often as an everyday ingredient rather than a medicinal one reserved for illness. It is said to move and cool the blood, clear heat, and detoxify.

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In the “ber” months, it is particularly beneficial as it nourishes Yin and moistens dryness, making it a traditional food for dry cough, dry throat, or the dryness associated with autumn/metal-element imbalance.

Black sesame seeds (linga)

Black sesame is considered one of the top ingredients for what TCM calls kidney-liver deficiency, which shows up as symptoms like premature graying hair, brittle nails, lower back or knee weakness, dizziness, and dry, thinning hair.

The black color logic applies directly here: black feeds water, water governs the kidneys, and the kidneys are considered the root of aging and vitality.

It also moistens the intestines, and its natural oil content makes it a traditional remedy for dry-type constipation, especially in the elderly or postpartum women, where TCM attributes constipation to blood and Yin deficiency rather than just a lack of fiber.

Tofu, tokwa, and taho

Tofu is considered a cooling food and is used to counteract what TCM calls “excess heat”—thirst, irritability, or dry mouth—making it a natural summer food. It’s gentle on digestion and is considered a good way to get protein without the heavy, hard-to-digest quality TCM attributes to red meat.

In the TCM body map, tofu is seen as supportive of the middle burner (digestive system), useful for people recovering from illness or with weak digestion. It is also known to generate fluids in the body. For those who run cold, it’s often recommended to pair tofu with warming aromatics like ginger and scallion specifically to offset this.

Kundol mushroom soup

From “Juana’s Table”

Serves 4

Ingredients:

2 cups kundol, seeds removed and cubed
8 dried shiitake mushrooms
1 thumb-sized piece of ginger, cut into strips
6 to 8 Szechuan peppercorns
4 cups water (chicken broth can also be used as a base instead of water)
1/2 cup oyster mushrooms
1/4 cup white fungus
Handful of tenga ng daga (wood ear) mushrooms
1 teaspoon sesame oil
Salt, to taste
Green onions, for garnish

Procedure

1. Pre-soak the white fungus until softened, usually 30 minutes.
2. In a pot, combine the shiitake mushrooms, ginger, peppercorns, and boil on low heat for 30 minutes.
3. Add the cubed kundol and cook until tender, around 10 minutes.
4. Mix in the oyster mushrooms and tenga ng daga.
5. Add in the white fungus, breaking it up into bite-sized pieces.
6. Before serving, drizzle sesame oil over the soup. Add salt to taste.
7. Transfer to a soup bowl and garnish with green onions.