Five-Color Bean and Dried Tangerine Peel Soup

Why people make this soup

In Chinese medicine and food therapy, colour carries meaning: red is associated with the heart, white with the lungs, green (or black) with the liver, yellow with the spleen, and black with the kidneys. By eating a wide range of naturally coloured whole foods, the thinking goes, you cover more nutritional ground and support the body’s different systems at once.

Nourilo came across a small grain shop one day — the kind that carries every imaginable variety of rice, wheat, and bean in open sacks — and picked up a beautiful selection of beans including the large, speckled “flower bean” (cranberry bean / borlotti type), which he particularly noted for its richness in vitamins and minerals, and its traditional association with strengthening the spleen and kidneys. He combined five varieties in a pot with chen pi, and found it made a satisfying, everyday-style nourishing soup — good for the whole family.