Goji Soup with Salted Duck Egg

We are familiar with goji berries or wolfberries. But do you know that the Gau Gei soup are made with the leaves of the goji berry plant? It’s just that the goji plant flowers but never fruits here.

Goji plants are very easy to plant. You can just use the stems of the ones you bought. After you’ve taken off the leaves for the soup, tuck that stem into some soil, in a area with good light, water it twice a day, and later on you’ll have goji leaves sprouting out. Give it more time, and then it’ll grow into a bush. My mom did that once, but it didn’t take long for us to eat off the plant : ) We were consuming faster than it could grow.

When I was 13, I did marketing for mom. Everyday she’ll tell me what to buy and which stall to go to. And 2 months after that, she no longer told me what to buy and I’ll decide by myself. One day, I bought these goji stalks and the lady who sold me them told me, the soup is best made with salted egg, not regular chicken eggs.

So now, may I present to you Goji Soup with salted duck egg.

180gm goji stalks (pluck only the leaves, discard the stems) Caution: Stems are thorny
1 salted egg (break the egg into a bowl, cut the yolk into small pieces, put the yolk back into the whites)
1 Tbsp wolfberries/goji berries
1/3 cup dried anchovies, rinsed
1 tsp oil
1L water
Salt to taste

1. Put anchovies into saucepan/wok and put in oil. Let it fry for a while. Put in water and bring to a boil. Lower the heat and let it simmer for 5 minutes.
2. Strain the anchovy stock. Return stock to pot. (You can skip step 1 and 2 if you prefer to use stock cubes)
3. Bring stock to a boil, with a ladle in one hand and the salted egg in another hand, pour the salted egg into the pot with the other hand stirring so that the egg will not clump together.
4. Now, taste the soup. If it’s not salty enough, add in salt. Do not season before the salted egg, because you won’t know how salty the egg will be.
5. Put in goji berries. Then the goji leaves. Stir and bring back to a boil.
6. Remove from heat and ladle into bowl to serve.

I wonder how do you clean those dirty looking salted duck eggs? Rinse the while thing under running water??? Or just rub it off with bare hands??? I always rub off the dirt before washing in a "wanted to throw away" plastic bag. And If you have a garden, rinse the egg there, so that the dirt won't clog your sink.