Coconut Peach Resin Pudding with Mango

When it comes getting your collagen fix, I’d say this is a lot prettier than bone broth, right??

This dish is inspired by mango sago, an Asian dessert made with tapioca-like pearls derived from the palm tree. Sago and tapioca are quite tasty, but don’t offer much nutrition-wise. Peach resin is a perfect substitute for taste and texture, and also gives you a wallop of collagen goodness.

The sweet coconut milk and peach resin mixture is also great for other applications — add it to your iced coffee or matcha for a super-charged pick-me-up. Or, serve it with pineapple for a piña colada vibe. I sometimes steal a couple sips in the middle of the day. The sweetness + healthy fats + pop of collagen always hits the spot.

RECIPE

1 can of light coconut milk
2 tablespoons of blonde coconut sugar (or the sweetener of your choice)
1/3 cup water
2 cups prepared peach resin (see here for instructions)
3 mangos, any variety
black sesame seeds
zest of one lime

Add coconut milk, sugar, and water to a small saucepan and simmer until sugar is dissolved. Add peach resin and simmer on low for 5 minutes. Remove from heat and let cool slightly.

Add to blender and gently blend, breaking the pieces of peach resin into smaller chunks. Chill.

When ready to serve, add coconut milk and peach resin to shallow bowls. Peel and slice mango. You can cut the mango any way you want, but to get the fanning effect, slice the pulp on each side of the mango seed. Choose one pointy end of the mango as your central point. Slice the mango very thinly, radiating from this central point. Make sure your slices do not intersect with one another, because you want the mango half to stay in one piece. When finished, gently pat the top down and to the side so it fans out. Repeat with the rest of the mango halves. Use a spatula to pick up the pieces one by one, and gently lay them on top of the coconut milk and peach resin.

Sprinkle with lime zest and sesame seeds. Serve cold!

Cantaloupe Ginger Juice with Peach Resin Pearls

We’ve covered the basics, and then the traditional. Now we’re bringing peach resin into the here and now — how you can integrate this amazing plant-based source of collagen into recipes you make and eat and drink everyday.

First up is one of my favorite flavor combinations ever — cantaloupe and ginger.

If you haven’t tried it, you must (with or without peach resin). When you think about it, cantaloupe is a very unique flavor. Lots of greens taste like spinach, and of course many meats taste like chicken. But nothing quite tastes like cantaloupe. You know it’s unique when you can’t really describe it. It just tastes like… cantaloupe!

The ginger really perks up the cantaloupe flavor without overpowering it. Cantaloupe is an awesome food to get your glow on — making it the perfect partner for peach resin. It’s super hydrating and loaded with antioxidants that fight inflammation.

The key here is to puree part of the cantaloupe, and then leave some chunks of melon and peach resin semi-blended. The result is a fun pulpy drink. The peach resin, when broken up, tastes like little tapioca pearls — soft and a little gummy and totally delightful.

RECIPE

1 ripe cantaloupe, chilled
2 ½ teaspoons minced ginger
1 cup peach resin, soaked for 24 hours and cleaned (see here for further instructions)

Bring pot of water to a boil and add peach resin. Simmer on low for 5 minutes. Drain in colander and run under cold water until cooled.

Puree ¾ of the cantaloupe and all the ginger until smooth and totally liquid. Add peach resin and remaining cantaloupe and blend on low, making sure ingredients you’ve just added are just chopped more finely and not totally blended.

Serve cold.

Note: Buy my preferred brand of peach resin here.

Traditional Beauty Soup - Poached Pear and Peach Resin

So today we’re going deeper into the world of peach resin, the collagen-packed Chinese beauty secret that I’m excited to bring to more people.

If chicken noodle soup is penicillin, then Chinese soups are a veritable pharmacy.

Though you might think of egg drop or hot and sour soup, there’s a whole world of medicinal Chinese soups that aren’t about taste, but are rather about healing.

Walk into any Chinatown and you’ll see these apothecaries filled with herbs and roots and fruits and fungi. A holistic doctor will examine you, diagnose your ailment, and will prescribe and measure out ingredients for a tea or soup.

Lest you think these are super obscure ingredients, a couple traditional Chinese medicine ingredients are now in the mainstream including ginseng and goji berries.

My grandmother is an expert at medicinal soups and since I’ve been a child, every time I visit her I must have at least one bowl of soup. Two, if I want to make her happy. She has liver-cleansing soup, a soup for my dad’s high blood pressure, a soup for my cousin who just had a baby… even a soup for your ovaries which my brothers weren’t allowed to drink (but my dad was?).

So to start we’re going to stick to peach resin’s roots with a traditional Chinese preparation. Before we go crazy with smoothies and energy balls and what not, I think it’s important to understand how the ingredient is mainly used.

Then we can get crazy.

Traditional Beauty Soup - Poached Pear and Peach Resin

I drink this soup as a snack or even a post-dessert-dessert. :) I don’t want to get too bogged down by going into the benefits of every ingredient since I want the peach resin to be the star. But suffice to say, every ingredient in a Chinese medicinal soup has a purpose.

This recipe can also be made with papaya, though you should shorten the poaching time. Traditional peach resin soups will also include a clear wood ear mushroom called “snow cloud”. I’ve left that out in an effort to keep this recipe as approachable as possible, but feel free to add it if you can find it.

5 cups water
2-4 tablespoons rock sugar — depending on your sweetness preference (feel free to use any sweetener you like)
2 very ripe Bartlett pears, cut into ½” pieces
¼ cup goji berries
2 cups prepared peach resin (see here for preparation instructions and see here for where to buy)

Bring water to a boil and add rock sugar. Lower heat and simmer until totally dissolved, then add goji berries and pears. Simmer on low for 5-6 minutes, then add peach resin and simmer for an additional 3 minutes.

Serve warm or cold.

All About Peach Resin - The Chinese Beauty Secret

You guys… I’ve been hoarding this info for too long.

Peach resin is my everyday, go-to drink for beauty and wellness. What is peach resin??

It’s collagen-packed, completely plant-based … and a Chinese beauty secret.

I first learned about peach resin from my grandma, who is a dancer, can outwalk me in any crowded outdoor market, and knows all sorts of concoctions to heal and nourish the body.

She swears by peach resin, and the proof is in her incredible youthfulness.

When we get older, our collagen production declines. Our skin dulls, our joints stiffen, our hair becomes brittle. Collagen makes up one third of the human body, so when we produce less, it shows. It’s the main protein of your connective tissue, which includes everything from your muscles and tendons, to your fascia and skin. Increasing your collagen contributes to:

• Glowing skin that’s plump, elastic, and less wrinkle-prone

• Increased mobility and flexibility

• Strong and shiny hair and nails

Bend. Strengthen. Glow.

I love peach resin because it’s an all-natural, unprocessed product that also tastes good and is fun to eat. And remember the bone broth craze? That was all about collagen. It takes a lot of bones and a lot of time to make bone broth. Peach resin? Just a couple minutes, once you soak the pieces.

I’ll be posting more recipes using peach resin — some traditionally Chinese, some not. But to start, here’s how to prepare it.

HOW TO PREPARE REACH RESIN

Peach resin is natural hardened sap from the peach tree. To prepare it, all you have to do is soak it in water for 24 hours at room temperature. Check on it periodically to make sure it has enough water and room to expand. The resin will grow 300%-400%, so plan your container accordingly!

Once you’ve soaked it, clean out the black sediment. This is just bark that got stuck in the sap as it hardened.

And now it’s ready to be used! You can eat it plain now, but it won’t taste like much. You can add some of the smaller, softer pieces to your morning yogurt or afternoon smoothie. Larger pieces benefit from a soft poaching.

I’m so excited to share this wonder ingredient with you. Stay tuned for more recipes! In the meantime, you can buy peach resin here.