It is still summer here in Hanoi and having a bowl of this sweet soup on these hot days is just so great. As I have mentioned earlier in the other related posts, sweet soups are often cooked by Vietnamese housewives during summer time because you can eat them anytime when you feel hot and thirsty, and crave for something to reduce the heat inside your body.
Rock sugar is always my choice when cooking sweet soups due to its good effect to our health as compared with the other kinds of sweetening agents. Rock sugar also gives the soups a gentle sweetness, which makes them more pleasant to consume on hot days.
This sweet soup cooked with pumpkin and green beans (those that have been blanched) is quite easy to cook. It doesn’t take long time as green beans and pumpkin are both very fast to cook until tender. I used one small pumpkin as a bowl to hold the soup, just for decoration. When I finished the soup, of course this raw pumpkin would be used to cook other yummy dishes.
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In fact, I don’t know whether there are these cranberry beans in Vietnam or what they are called in Vietnamese name. They just resemble another kind of bean which is used popularly among Vietnamese people. This bean can be made into sweet soups or sticky rice dishes.
This is my first experience with cranberry beans. I immediately thought of make some sweet soup with them. Using beans in making sweet soups is a popular habit. Sweet soups are not only favorite street foods by teenagers but a lot of young adults love eating them too. Sweet soups can be cooked very fast and easily at home. Especially during hot summer, sweet soups are consumed as desserts or at anytime of the day to reduce the heat inside the bodies. During winter, sweet soups are added hot spices, mostly fresh ginger root, to warm up the bodies. Therefore, a lot of youngs and olds like sweet bean soups.
I cooked this sweet soup with cranberry beans in the same way Vietnamese people cook that similar kind of bean. I was amazed at the taste of the soup. It was so special with gentle sweetness of rock sugar and mild fragrance of pandan leaves. Cranberry beans offer a distinctive and very attractive flavor to the soup.
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Though it is sweet in the taste, this sweet red bean soup has a heat-relieving effect. That’s why during summer time, many Vietnamese women prepare this sweet bean soup at home when it is hot. Instead of red bean, green bean also has this effect. After being chilled, or added with some ice cubes, the cold soup becomes very refreshing. My mom often cooked sweet bean soup, too. I remembered hot summer days when I got home after school, I would be happy as a clam to find out a small bowl of cold sweet bean soup in the fridge that my mom had prepared for me.
When guests came to visit the family during summer days, greeting them with the chilled soup would be a simple yet friendly treat. The cold soup helps reduce the heat of inside the body. Using rock sugar as a sweetener is also a tip to gain the heat-relieving effect of this soup. In addition, to add more pleasant and special flavor to the soup, I added some dried tangerine peels while cooking the beans. The soup can be served just as it is, or a little coconut cream added will bring in a different taste.
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