8. 大头菜 / 淡口采 - Salt Cured Turnip
Here's another Sichuan beauty for you. Sadly, you are unlikely to run into it outside China. It comes in China with various names. Fuchsia Dunlop calls it 大头菜 (dà tóu cài, literally 'big head vegetable') , a name I've seen elsewhere, whereas my local supplier calls it 淡口菜 (dàn kǒu cài, literally 'mild mouth vegetable). Whatever, it is a type of turnip Brassica juncia var. napitormis, native to China.
This is another salt-cured item and arrives shrink wrapped in a pair, curled into a ball.
Teasing the ball apart reveals the two plants, looking like some monsters from the deep.
It is, as the local name suggests, relatively mildly cured compared to the zha cai in the previous numbered post, but is used in the same ways.