Chinese Green Vegetables

Appears in

Published 1998

About

One winter’s day, in the course of working on this book, we went over to the Chinese grocery store not far from where we live and brought home every green vegetable we could find. Almost all of them were in some way familiar to us, either because we’d eaten them frequently in China or Taiwan or simply because we’d seen them in the produce section day in and day out for years. But for some reason we rarely bought most of them, reaching habitually for the produce we knew more about.

So now we had brought them home—tiny baby bok choi, robust choi sum, hearty gai laan—and we put a big pot of salted water on the stove to boil. One at a time we boiled each vegetable, tasting frequently to determine the cooking time. As each one came out (most took no more than a minute, three minutes at the maximum), we lightly salted them and began eating. It was an earth-shattering discovery: Each one was fabulous! Some had a sweet edge, some were slightly bitter, but all were delicious. And easy. And nutritious.