Vegetables

In her excellent book, Oriental Vegetables, Joy Larkcom asserts that ‘vegetables are enormously important in China: the average vegetable consumption per head is said to be higher than in any western European country or the USA. They are the warp and woof of Chinese cookery, found in some form in most dishes.’ She is absolutely right. Furthermore, many of the vegetables, notably brassicas, bamboo shoots and bean sprouts, give Chinese dishes their distinctive texture and flavour.

The brassicas are the most characteristic Chinese vegetables, and they are nutritious and healthy as well. The most common among them – these days also the most well known outside of China – are the Chinese cabbages which, despite their confusing names in different countries and continents, can be divided into two main groups. The celery cabbage (Brassica rapa var pekinensis), known as Chinese leaves in Great Britain and napa cabbage in the States, is the most popular in northern China. From October onwards, you can see mountains of these cabbages piled up on city pavements, as they are harvested to sustain a large population during the winter. Among their different types, the cylindrical Tianjin cabbage (wong nga baak in Cantonese) is the sweetest and most sought after, not only by northern Chinese but by southern Chinese as well. The Chinese leaves grown in Israel and the West are of the more barrel type and, although less succulent compared to wong nga baak, are sweet and juicy and hence a welcome addition to the selection of Western vegetables.