Adzuki Bean / Small Red Bean

The small elongated red beans of Vigna umbellata (to be distinguished from the rounder red adzuki of Vigna angularis, Chi Dou — though the confusion is common and tolerated in cookery).

Grown in Asia for thousands of years, they are at once a food of traditional cookery (Japanese anko, the sweet red paste of Cantonese desserts, congee) and a plant of the orthodox pharmacopoeia.

Their intense red colour is the visual signature of what usage attaches to the Blood and to the movements of Fire and Blood.

The reference food-herb for freeing the fluids in excess gently, particularly on constitutions of damp stasis, and for clearing gently the heat in the Blood.

An emblematic food-herb of the supplementing cookery of Asia, at home in the pharmacopoeia as much as in sweet dishes.

• Everyday cooking: soak for 4 hours then cook for 1 hour in water — used in congee, soups and traditional desserts
• traditional decoction: 30 to 60 g, simmer for 45 minutes minimum
• Azuki paste (Anko): the Japanese tradition, cooked into a sweet paste for pastries
• Cantonese Tang Shui: the traditional sweet soup with azuki and rock sugar

To be used in moderation in cases of already very loose stools or of a constitution of markedly deficient Yin (its freeing nature can add to inner dryness).