Make Your Own Malunggay Tea

I can have malunggay tea when I don't feel like cooking. I simply put the dried leaves in a mug of hot water. Then I eat the leaves after drinking the tea.

Malunggay tea is available commercially, but it's very expensive. It seems to be as expensive as oolong tea!

Buying and Drying Malunggay in Singapore

Where can you buy malunggay in Singapore?

I live in the Jurong West area and I hear mass at the Church of St. Francis of Assisi on Boon Lay Avenue. I asked around and I was told that there's a wet market behind the church.

On Friday morning, July 23, I walked from the church to the wet market. It's actually a cluster of kopitiams, small grocery stores, and small dry goods store. I walked all the way down to the very back of the cluster.

This is a stem of malunggay leaves. It's about 2 feet long.

Obliquely to the right of the last kopitiam, there is a small wet market consisting of fish, poultry, and vegetables. There's one vegetable stall which sells malunggay. It's supposed to be the only store which carries malunggay.

One bunch which consists of 9 to 14 stems cost SGD1.00. (Please see the picture in my previous post below, or google 'malunggay.') I bought three bunches. I removed the abundant leaves from the stems and put them inside a rattan basket.

Here's a close-up of the leaves.

From past experience, I knew that left-over fresh malunggay does not keep well inside a ref. After a few days, the leaves become soggy and blackish in the ref.

How to dry malunggay

I read somewhere that the fresh leaves can be dried by simply airing them inside a net bag. I used a rattan basket because I don't have a net bag.


Post-leaves harvest: Malunggay stem (right photo)


So I had fresh malunggay on day 1.

On day 2, I had half-dry malunggay.

After a week, I now have brick-like malunggay leaves.

I must tell you that I turned the leaves in the basket once in the morning and once in the evening.

That's to ensure that the drying would be even.

By the way, the dried leaves are supposed to contain 3x the nutrients in fresh leaves.

Power of Malunggay, Shiitake Mushroom, and Broccoli

I cook only to keep body and soul together. During the 10 years that I've worked in Taiwan and Singapore, I hardly ever cooked.

Why am I suddenly cooking? And why malunggay, shiitake mushroom, and broccoli vegetable medley?

The megastar in this non-cook's production is malunggay (scientific name: moringa oleifera). It is said to be a miracle food packed many times over with the nutrients in milk, carrot, oranges, bananas, etc.

(Shiitake mushroom and broccoli are already well-established kitchen stars for their healthy benefits. It is the malunggay which is the mega-star waiting in the wings!)

Malunggay is touted to possess other benefits too many to mention here. This is not a research article, but a personal anecdote. That being said, you can find many research articles on malunggay.

I am making sure I have malunggay in my diet as preventive maintenance. My body is like a car I've been driving for 10 years. It's performed well, but has been developing minor problems lately due to neglect. I've been eating in school canteens and fastfood chains for 10 years. That makes me a good candidate for many possible ailments, such as colon cancer.

I used to think that I don't have the time to go to the wet market nor the time to cook for myself. It's so much cheaper and faster to eat in a canteen or fastfood restaurant.

But wet-marketing and cooking my own healthy food is infinitely cheaper and less painful than getting sick, undergoing expensive and invasive diagnostic procedures, submitting to more expensive and more invasive surgery, yielding to equally expensive and unbelievably toxic treatments, and becoming a helpless, impatient patient!

Let's get on with the cooking.


Ingredients:

garlic -- 3 segments, minced
onion - medium-sized, sliced
tomato - medium-sized, sliced
shiitake mushroom - 3 pieces, medium-sized (sliced after soaking in water for 30 minutes)
squash (pumpkin) -- 1/8, cut into bite size (unpeeled)
dried anchovies -- about 25 pieces
sea salt to taste
fish sauce to taste
broccoli -- 1/3, cut into bite size
malunggay leaves - 1 cup

Procedure:

1. Put 3 cups of water in a saucepan. Soak 3 pieces of shiitake mushroom in it.
2. Add the garlic, onion, and tomato.
3. Add the anchovies, sea salt, and fish sauce.
4. Add the squash.
5. Put the lid on the pan; bring it to a boil.
6. Turn down the fire; put in the broccoli.
7. Turn off the fire. Put in the malunggay.

I set the table for one and scooped brown rice on my plate. Afterwards, I scooped half of my malunggay medley into a big bowl. I took all of the malunggay leaves from the pan. This was my lunch yesterday, July 23, 2010.

Dinner? I took out the squash from the left-over broth. Then I added snow peas (chicharo) in it and boiled it. After turning off the fire, I added pechay leaves and a cup of fresh malunggay leaves, of course. I added the squash into the medley, and read a book as I finished my dinner.

Will it work? I know it will.

I became very sick about 30 years ago. I had no appetite and I had lost so much weight. I had a fever on some days, and there were nights when I couldn't sleep.

My doctor, the late Dr. Francisco Calingasan of Tuy, Batangas, prescribed 3 glasses of milk a day. Each glass must have 3 egg yolks. And every soupy dish I ate must be sprinkled with fresh malunggay leaves. The only medicine he asked me to take was Vitamin B complex.

Dr. Calingasan was ahead of his time! He's a US-trained surgeon, mind you. From hindsight, he was probably trying out nutritional therapy.

In one month, I was back to my normal self.... I never got seriously ill since then. But I forgot about the malunggay.

(Today, a doctor would probably tell me that I have depression and would prescribe tranquilizers, sleeping pills, etc.)

It's time to go back to basics. By the way, malunggay is supposed to be great for grandmothers like me! It prevents and cures old-age problems like high-blood pressure, diabetes, loss of memory, dullness of mind, physical weakness, and others.