Flavor: Unique — Meal: Easy, Cold

“When it got really hot we ate all our meals in the front courtyard,” recalls Mrs. Chiang. “It was too hot for meat dishes, and we ate mainly rice, cold dishes, and freshly picked vegetables and fruit. This spinach salad was one of our summer mainstays.”

The salad consists of some briefly cooked spinach bathed in a sauce containing ginger, scallions, soy sauce, sesame oil, vinegar, and hot pepper flakes in oil. Because the hot pepper flakes are optional, this can be either a hot cold dish or a mild cold one. The only trick in its preparation is to make sure that the spinach doesn’t cook too long; it should be bright green.