Tang Ge Cai (Wild Watercress) and Monk Fruit Lean Pork Soup

Why people make this soup

Tang ge cai is one of those humble vegetables that carries a disproportionate amount of food-therapy history. Related to the watercress family, it has a slightly peppery, earthy flavour and has been used in Cantonese kitchens for generations to address lung heat, phlegm buildup, and lingering coughs. It is available at Chinese or Asian grocers alongside other wild greens. Paired with monk fruit (luo han guo), which is intensely sweet and traditionally cooling to the lungs, this soup comes together as something genuinely pleasant to drink — sweet and clean-tasting, not medicinal — while addressing the kind of damp, phlegmy cough that tends to hang around after a cold.