Double boiled frog meat with bitter gourd – a popular remedy for Dengue Fever patients

Mosquitoes bite humans, Frogs eat mosquitoes, and we eat frogs. Therefore we are still the most powerful in the food chain.
An elderly explained to me during one of the tours at the frog farm. With the current alarming trend of rising Dengue fever cases, we are going to discuss about this recipe of Double boiled frog meat with bitter gourd – a popular remedy for Dengue Fever patients.

Now what is Dengue fever?

It is an infectious tropical disease caused by the dengue virus.
Symptoms include fever, headache, muscle and joint pains, and a characteristic skin rash that is similar to measles. In a small proportion of cases the disease develops into the life-threatening dengue hemorrhagic fever, resulting in bleeding, low levels of blood platelets and blood plasma leakage, or into dengue shock syndrome, where dangerously low blood pressure occurs. (Source: Wikipedia)

This virus attacks the victims’ immunity system and currently, there is no commercially available vaccine or cure for it.

Frog meat is known to cure Dengue Fever
(Translated from an article of Xing Zhou Ri Bao 星洲日报)
A hawker, Ms Chen, said that her daughter, 9 years old, was hospitalised because she was down with dengue fever and her daughter’s blood platelet count was lowering as days passed.
On the 4th day, Ms Chen saw that her daughter was passing blood out when she urinates and defecates. Her whole body was very red as well. The doctor told Ms Chen that her daughter might not survive through the night. Ms Chen got very worried and thus, got help from her friend (Ms Huang).

Ms Huang told Ms Chen the Chinese believes that double boiling 4-5 pieces of bitter gourd together with 4-5 pieces of frog meat together till there are four or five tablespoons of the essence left might help.

Ms Chen did as instructed and fed her daughter on that night at 9pm. 1 hour later, when the doctor checked on Ms Chen’s daughter, her blood platelet increased and the redness on her body reduced.

After she heard that her daughter’s condition had improved, she fed her with more spoons of the stewed frog essence. On the next morning at 5am, Ms Chen’s daughter’s blood platelet has fully increased to the normal blood count and had recovered from Dengue fever.

During this period, Ms Chen’s daughter was only on fever medication and no other special medications.

Frog meat is known to improve vitality, neutralise heatiness and remove toxic matters (清血). Other than these healing properties, frog meat is also a healthier choice of meat as it contains only 1/3 of fats compared to that of chicken breast and the same amount of protein. It helps that our froogs are not fed on antibiotics and or hormonal growth steroid feed. Thus, this meat is as organic as it can be.

This recipe can be cooked as a regular soup dish by adding a bowl of water to cook with the rest of the ingredients.

Ingredients
2 small Japanese bitter gourd
2 whole fresh frog
1 tablespoon of red dates
1 tablespoon of wolf berries

Method
1. Wash the frog leg and chop into pieces
2. Steam all the ingredients with medium heat and low heat when the water is boiling vigorously.
3. Boil for at least 3 hours so that the bitter gourd will not taste so bitter.

TIPS! It will help if the dish is served hot as frog meat contains very little fats and the texture will harden when it is cold!