Water Spinach with a Robust Sauce

Also known as hollow spinach, since the stems are hollow, this popular vegetable is basically quite mild and insipid in taste, so the Chinese use a very robust sauce to flavour it. Fermented bean curd cheese is one popular sauce (especially among vegetarians), but shrimp paste remains the favourite, despite the inescapably heady atmosphere it generates when the vegetable is being cooked, which may not endear you to your neighbours. If they happen to be from Malaysia or Thailand, you can rel