Baby Bok Choy
Serves 16
Ingredients
3 lbs baby bok choy
3 T peanut oil
4 cloves garlic, finely minced
2 t grated fresh ginger
6 T vegetable broth
salt to taste
1 t sesame oil
Directions
1. Start by trimming the stem off – don’t trim too much – just the end. Cutting the thick stem off will ensure that the bok choy cooks evenly. Separate out the leaves, keep the tender center intact and clean under running water. Drain.
2. Finely mince garlic and grate fresh ginger with a microplane grater. Grating the ginger helps break up the tough fibers! (and yeah, sometimes when the ginger is nice and fresh, I don’t even bother peeling off the paper-thin skin)
3. Place wok or frying pan on your stove and pour in the cooking oil. Add the garlic and ginger. Turn the heat to medium-high. Let the ginger and garlic gently sizzle in the oil. When the aromatics become fragrant and light golden brown, add the bok choy leaves. Toss very well to coat each leaf with the garlicky, gingery oil for 15 seconds. Pour in broth, water or wine. Immediately cover and let cook for 1 minute. Season with salt and drizzle a bit of sesame oil on top.
Notes
Bokchoy is sweetish in flavor, warming, and lacks poison. It is good for circulation of the bowels and benefits them. It expels vexation of the thorax and counteracts liquor thirst.
Paul D Buell and Eugene N Anderson, A soup for the Qan: Chinese dietary medicine of the Mongol era as seen in Hu Szu-Hui's Yin-shan Cheng-yao, introduction, translation, commentary, and Chinese text, Sir Henry Wellcome Asian Series, London and New York, Kegan Paul International, 2000, pp. 715, £150.00 (0-7103-0583-4).
The Yin-shan Cheng-yao, 'Proper and essential things for the Emperor's food and drink' (1330), which is celebrated as the "first Chinese cookbook".