Chè Sâm Bổ Lượng - Another Vietnamese Chè

This is another of my favorite Viet "sweet soups" (for another fav of mine, check here), I used to buy it from a store/shop near both my house and school. It's very very nice on a warm day being a cold chè. Now that I think about it, my grandmother can cook a lot of dishes well but she rarely make any attempts at chè, our family almost always buy these sweet treats, odd! Maybe I can convince her to make some this summer, or maybe if I feel like it, I might even show her that I'm not so terrible in the kitchen. To her credit, my grandmother, unlike most women her generation, never ever used that phrase "you are a girl, you should learn to cook blah blah blah" on me when I was living at home.

Back to the task at hand, this dessert is easy to make. Honestly, I don't know if I missed out anything. I think I managed to get hold of all the ingredients that the store near my house uses but I'm sure there are other variants. A friend said I should put up photos of the ingredients and/or photos taken along the cooking process too but 1)I tend to forget my camera until I'm done cooking, and 2)my kitchen isn't so photo-worthy. But this time, since most of the ingredients are dry, it was easy for me to take some photos so here you are:

The list of ingredients goes from top left to bottom right of the photo above. Apart from barley and brown sugar, you may find the rest at any chinatown's grocery store.

INGREDIENTS:
Make about 5-6 servings

2oz dried longans, soaked in water for 15min
12 (or more, to your preference) black dates, soaked in water for 15min
1/2 cup brown sugar
Shredded kelp/seaweed
2oz barley, soaked for 15min
*2oz dried lotus seeds, soaked in warm water for an hour or so

*If you want this dessert on a lazy day, you might want to use canned cooked lotus seeds but consume preservatives at your own risks ;)

METHOD:
You can make everything in one pot if you know how long each ingredient is going to take so you can plan for everything to be cooked just right once it's done. However, since it was my first attempt, I cooked lotus seeds and barley separately.

Cook barley till al dente. Remove the stems inside the lotus seeds before cooking them until al dente. Drain both.

In a pot, cook the sugar in 5 cups of water until the sugar has dissolved completely. Add dates, longans, cooked lotus seeds, and barley to the syrup, cook until barley and lotus seeds are tender, about another 5 min. Turn off the heat and let cool to room temperature.

Rinse the fresh kelp well, cook it in boiling water for about 2 min. Immediately dunk the kelp in a bowl of iced water to quench the cooking process. Overcooking the kelp will result in a mushy-and-certainly-unappetizing mess. Cut into 1.5in strips. Add these strips to the mixture once it has cooled. Chill the dessert in a fridge and serve with ice cubes.