Orange Is The New Prize

TANGERINE PEEL IS A MUST-HAVE in the traditional Chinese kitchen - used to imbue robust stews with an elegant citrus note, or lend a whisper of freshness to dessert. Besides its flavour-boosting properties, it's also an efficient purger of gaminess in meat.

But to the Cantonese, the dried peel's appeal goes even further, especially when it's aged and even more if it's over 50 years old. Aged tangerine peel is revered as a prized medicinal herb with a current market rate of S$6,000 per tael or 38 grams. In Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), tangerine peel is as lauded as ginseng among Chinese sinsehs; it is a well-established remedy for cough as it is believed to expel excessive phlegm from the lungs, and aids digestion.

Not all tangerines make good peel, however. There are many farms in southern China, stretching from Zhejiang to Guangzhou, that grow cultivars such as cha zhi gan, mi gan, and fu ju, but the best peels are said to come from Xinhui. This district in Guangzhou has a unique cultivar known as dahong pao, a peel that is often referred to in most Chinese medical books and literature.