Chinese Cabbage Hearts with Glass Noodles

It took me years to bring myself to cook a plate of Chinese cabbage. My first week in Taiwan I ate virtually nothing but, being a panicky vegetarian who didn’t have the vocabulary to order anything else. Then, I lived with a very old Chinese who couldn’t chew worth a cabbage and would stir-fry the vegetable to a textureless, ignoble death.

• What changed my mind was literally the heart of a female cabbage. There it lay on the chopping block, one small cabbage in