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Chinese vegetables

eatingwitheddie
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Dejah

Dejah

Posted
Posted
When we lived on the inherited family homestead, from 1966 - 92, I had a huge garden. Beets, peas, carrots, etc were  available from neighboring farms....... I grew Chinese vegetables on raised beds.

Dejah: you didn't use "night soil" to fertilize your garden, did you? :laugh::laugh:

Nope. The aged manure from the horse barn was MUCH ...errr....better.

Besides, I didn't have the buckets and poles to carry night soil. :rolleyes:

Dejah

www.hillmanweb.com

  • 2 months later...
Ben Hong

Ben Hong

Posted
Posted

Came in from Toronto last night after spending three days at a conference and with my kids.

Other than the requisite rubber chicken we had to eat at the official dinners, I treated my kids and their SOs to a couple of "down-home" type meals. Highlight meal was the seafood dinner we had. Besides the usual bbq meats which were requested by all, we had crab in scallions and ginger, braised variety of mushrooms on pea shoots. (there was a new 'shroom I never had before called "king oyster mushroom, absolutely terrific taste and texture), yu pen (grouper), shrimp stuffed tofu, hong siew fish (deep fried with a sweet and sour sauce), baked oysters (gorgeous), various other dishes. Sorry, no pics.

Brought home a humongous raft of amaranth, which will be flash wokked with haum ha , and a couple of bunches of chrysanthemum greens, which will be cooked with fu yu.

Does anyone else have suggestions on cooking aforesaid vegs?

Apicio

Apicio

Posted
Posted

I am not ignoring your question but tell me first where you went to eat. Inquiring minds want to know.

Gato ming gato miao busca la vida para comer

Dejah

Dejah

Posted
Posted
Brought home a humongous raft of amaranth, which will be flash wokked with haum ha , and a couple of bunches of chrysanthemum greens, which will be cooked with fu yu.
Whoa! Amaranth? I had no idea this was/is used in Chinese cooking? Can you elaborate?

I'm totally intrigued.

shelora

The amaranth I grew was small, about the same size as spinach. As Ben mentioned, flash wokked with haum ha is probably the most common way to cook these.

Is the Toisanese for chrysanthemum greens "tung how"? If it is, then you can eat my share! Mom loves it, but I can't get it past my nose...and they look so good!

Dejah

www.hillmanweb.com

Ben Hong

Ben Hong

Posted
Posted

Edible amaranth is called "han choy" in my dialect/accent, delicious but it cooks down to nothing. Tung ho or chrysanthemum greens to me is like catnip to a cat. Absolutely my fave among the leafy greens.

Tepee

Tepee

Posted
Posted (edited)

Amaranth...in cantonese, it's yeen choy and it features in our menu at least once a week, both the green and the purplish/green ones. Another way I cook it is, make a good ikan bilis(dried anchovies) soup stock. Add the yeen choy in at the last moment together with some soft tofu.

Glad to hear you enjoyed yourself in Toronto, Ben-sook.....eating! :biggrin:

I'm like Sue-On. Can't take the tong-ho smell...I'm the only one who doesn't take it in my family....doesn't matter how good it's supposed to be.

Edited by Tepee (log)

TPcal!

Food Pix (plus others)

Please take pictures of all the food you get to try (and if you can, the food at the next tables)............................Dejah

shelora

shelora

Posted
Posted
Whoa! Amaranth? I had no idea this was/is used in Chinese cooking? Can you elaborate?

I'm totally intrigued.

shelora

Two types of amaranth are used in Asian cooking:

the purple-and-green kind

and the all-green kind

Thanks Suzy. I was thinking about the amaranth seed.

I've seen those the two plants (from the photos you posted) many times in the markets here and have wondered what they were.

Egullet. Gotta love it.

Ben Hong

Ben Hong

Posted
Posted
I am not ignoring your question but tell me first where you went to eat.  Inquiring minds want to know.

I am so sorry that I can't ever remember the name of the place, even though I have eaten there about 5 times this year. It is about a block and a half north of Dundas on Spadina (west side of the street), the usual red and gold sign with the word "seafood" included in the lettering, tidy place without the usual BBQ meats hanging in the window, but at the rear of the dining room is an aquarium. The staff is comprised of mature people rather than the usual youngsters...very very friendly and helpful. The food is, in my opinion, a cut above the usual in Old Chinatown.

The reason I keep frequenting the Dundas/Spadina area is because my family and relatives are mostly downtowners, and my visits are usually business related which means downtown. To get to the "other" chinatowns in Markham, Richmond Hill, etc. we need to drive, a hassle, but sometimes the food is worth the trip though. Still, going into Old Chinatown is like going home to me, as I have been going there since my late teens. And, that's a long, long time ago...before City Hall was built, erasing 3/4 of the really old Chinatown around Dundas and Elizabeth St.

Hest88

Hest88

Posted
Posted

I love the taste of ham ha and fu yu, so that's how I do my amaranth and ong choi. I've actually starting using more fu yu than ham ha, mainly because the cleaner taste is becoming more preferable. Whenever I have those veggies without ham ha or fu yu they taste too bland now. My taste buds have just become so corrupted!

Dejah

Dejah

Posted
Posted

Fu yu is wonderful with green beans. I loved sweet potato leaves (see yeep) with fu yu...can't get them here. :sad:

Dejah

www.hillmanweb.com

muichoi

muichoi

Posted
Posted

Ong Choi with fu Yu is probably my favourite vegetable dish in the whole world-but it really needs a huge flame. I couldn't approach it until I got my outdoor wok, so I used to serve a cold version-the garlic and fu yu fried together, sugar and wine added then red chilli rings,the whole stirred into very quickly blanched, refreshed and drained Ong Choi. A beautiful starter!

  • 9 months later...
mrbigjas

mrbigjas

Posted
Posted

i put up a picture of a vegetable i just picked up at the asian grocery here:

http://img421.imageshack.us/img421/971/mysterygreen6bj.jpg

http://img302.imageshack.us/img302/4496/mysterygreen20pl.jpg

(sorry about my fingers in the picture holding the leaf open)

would any of you mind looking at those pictures, and telling me what it is, and how i should cook it?

for anyone who can't see it, it is greens, cut about a foot long. the stems are about 1/2 inch or 1 cm thick and hollow, and they are slightly ridged and a little furry, like a nettle or a tomato stem. not all of the stems have leaves on them, but the ones that do, the leaves are large, spade-shaped, and wrinkled/veined. there are some tendrils here and there that are spiral shaped, like pea shoots. they smell like.... well, green, for lack of a better word.

unfortunately they didn't have either the english or the vietnamese name on the sign, only the chinese, and i didn't have a pen to write it down.

thank you for any help you can give!

Eilen

Eilen

Posted
Posted

They almost look like squash or cucumber leaves.

As for what to do with them--I'd be interested in knowing also...

jo-mel

jo-mel

Posted
Posted

Kinda looks like a grape leaf to me. Grape vines have tendrils --- as do squash plants. I couldn't find it in the Thesaurus I usually refer to.

Dejah

Dejah

Posted
Posted
Kinda looks like a grape leaf to me.  Grape vines have tendrils --- as do squash plants.  I couldn't find it in the Thesaurus I usually refer to.

I don't think grape leaf stems are furry. I also think it is very young pumpkin or some other squash leave. The leaves on a moo gwa plant are about that size even when full grown, where as a pumpkin or zuchinni leave is much larger.

Dejah

www.hillmanweb.com

anzu

anzu

Posted
Posted

With the pumpkin greens I've been able to obtain up till now, the stalks are too stringy to be eaten unpeeled. Peeling them is a bit of a nuisance - you have to snap the stem part-way along, whereupon the outer stringy layer separates from the softer inner layer. Then pull along the tringy part to remove the outer layer. This can take a few attempts to build up the knack of how to do it.

I try to showcase the flavor by sauteeing simply with a little garlic and some salt.

  • 6 months later...
rumball

rumball

Posted
Posted

i adore chinese mustard greens : gai(kai) choy. they are usually slightly cooked, but i use them raw in salads, they remind me of french mustard greens, but are crunchier, smoother and more peppery without the fuzzy feel.

they're great with baked calabasa (mex. pumpkin) with boursin or goat cheese, drizzled with olive oil and very old balsamico. chinese garlic chives (in nyc markets they call them leeks) are great on top of that too.

i go out of my way to korean market to get them.

  • 1 month later...
hzrt8w

hzrt8w

Posted
Posted

There is a vegetable that the Taiwanese just called "A" vegetable.

In our Asian markets here, they just give the lable "A" Cai - with the "Cai" part in Chinese (Mandarin), which means "vegetable". So, "A" vegetable is the name of that vegetable.

Does anybody know the history of the name of this vegetable? Why is an English alphabet "A" used as the name and not a Chinese character?

W.K. Leung ("Ah Leung") aka "hzrt8w"
Tepee

Tepee

Posted
Posted

Don't get them here...or they could be known by some other un-alphabet name. Pix? Or can I just google?

TPcal!

Food Pix (plus others)

Please take pictures of all the food you get to try (and if you can, the food at the next tables)............................Dejah

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