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In The Fourth Trimester, we ask parents: What meal nourished you after welcoming your baby? This month, it’s a savory-meets-sweet soup from Taiwan-based cookbook author Clarissa Wei.
In Taiwan, where I live, the postpartum recovery period is taken very seriously. So seriously, in fact, that it is customary to outsource the first month of care to licensed professionals. Many Taiwanese women who give birth for the first time either check into an all-inclusive postpartum hotel or hire an at-home nanny. When I gave birth to my son last fall, I chose the former.
Every day for 30 days, I had three hot meals delivered straight to my room—a nutritionally balanced tray of protein (usually pork, chicken, or fish), white rice, steamed leafy greens, and multiple soups. The soups were the most generously portioned and came steeped with herbal medicine. He shou wu, a dried root, imparted a dark-chocolate-like hue to pork broth. Ginger gave a kick to golden, glistening chunks of chicken. Long spears of astragalus root added a licorice aroma that filled the room. Bright red dates and goji berries offered much-needed pops of color. Eucomnia, which looked like the burnt tree bark, made everything bittersweet.
My baby spent the majority of his time inside a nursery, cared for by a platoon of nurses uniformed in pastel green. Meanwhile, I was across the hall in a luxury hotel room that cost roughly $220 a night, lounging on a queen-size bed with a stunning view of the city. I had access to massage service and baby-rearing courses. The nurses were on call 24/7 and were responsible for feeding, bathing, dressing, and changing my baby. I only had one job: to rest and eat whatever they fed me.
In the Chinese-speaking world and throughout Asia, soups are a central part of postpartum recovery. It is believed that a women’s qi, or life force, is depleted while giving birth. Herbal broths can help speed up the healing process.
When I was struggling with my milk supply, the nurses doubled the amount of lactation tea that was sent to me. The hallway had a communal water cooler and miscellaneous herbal teas constantly on tap. My mom, not satisfied by the already copious amounts of herbs I was consuming, sent over bags of sheng huang tea, a common postpartum concoction—composed of angelica root, red dates, ginger, goji berries, and licorice—said to expedite recovery.
The meals were all lightly seasoned, bordering on bland. But where they lacked salt, they were rich in Chinese medicine. At first I welcomed it. Even though I couldn’t always identify the herbs in the soups, I associated the bitter earthiness of boiled roots with detox and rest. My mother and grandmother used to conjure up similar brews when someone in the family fell ill or needed an extra boost. Some of the ingredients, like cordyceps, sounded intimidating, but I subscribed to the scarcity paradigm. The more obscure something was, the more valuable it was, I reasoned.
Three weeks in, though, I needed a break. I craved salt, deep-fried chicken, and potatoes. I started sneaking out for fast food, hamburgers, boba, and a cold glass of beer. All the items that, according to tradition, I was not supposed to be consuming.
Whereas a lot of my friends in the US wished they had access to the plethora of healing bone broths that I did, I had the opposite problem. It turns out that the principle of “everything in moderation” applies to healthy foods as well. Toward the end of my stay at the hotel, I drank the soups like I was taking shots, ignoring the herbs and meat inside. I figured all the beneficial properties were in the broth anyway.
But one day for lunch near the end of my stay, there was a soup that stopped me in my tracks. A soup that stood out from the parade of the more medicinal broths that I was served. It was a dried fig and pork rib soup, and it was a marvel—a sweet-savory concoction that felt like a warm hug.
Pork rib soup is a common tonic in Taiwan, usually paired with daikon and a dash of white pepper. But the dried figs added an unexpected twist. Figs are not seen much in Taiwanese cuisine, but are said to have both laxative and lactation-promoting properties. I was served Turkish figs, which were plump and chewy, adding a caramel-like sweetness to the broth.
I enjoyed every spoonful and wished I had more. And I was surprised by how simple it was. It had so few ingredients, but also so much complexity of flavor.
When I returned home from the postpartum center, I brought the ethos of that soup with me. I continued the practice of drinking herbal teas (seven months later, I’m still working on the stash my mom gave me), but instead of cooking with hard-to-source herbs, I prioritized making simple broths I genuinely craved. Chicken soup with meaty shiitakes or tangy tangerine peels. Dried fig and pork rib soup, cooked gently until the meat falls off the bones.
While the heavier, medicinal-tasting broths replenished my body, it was the fig and pork rib soup that truly comforted me—a reminder that nourishment during recovery isn’t just about physical healing. It’s about finding joy in what you consume.
