Do you eat bok choy? Hold on. I should back this up for a moment. Have you ever tried bok choy? There is a high possibility if you’ve eaten Chinese food. Bok choy is one of the most popular veggies in China.
I think bok choy is a little underrated. If you haven’t tried it yet, you should put it on your grocery list immediately — it’s super delicious. Bok choy and napa are Chinese cabbages. Cabbage is a Newfoundland and Labrador standard. A lot of people can relate to it if you like a traditional cooked dinner or cabbage rolls. Come one, who doesn’t love a hefty plate of those meals?
“5 p.m.: Oh boy, Chinese food. 5:05 p.m.: I ate way too much Chinese food. 5:10 p.m.: Oh boy, leftover Chinese food.” — Unknown
If I had to describe bok choy in plain language, I would say its appearance is a cross between a regular cabbage and celery, a marriage of the two, visually. The reason I say that is because it has a common mix of dark and light green parts, but rather than grow in the familiar round shape, it grows in stalks like celery. Depending on what the grocery store carries in your neck of the woods you might see a regular-sized bok choy or toy/baby choy – super cute.
Supposedly, bok choy is one of the oldest cultivated vegetables in the world. We’re talking thousands of years ago foodie friends — like 14th Century old. Actually, it was around that time it became a key ingredient in kimchi.
You can cook bok choy in a variety of ways. It’s an extremely versatile vegetable. Just think about how you cook your other veggies. There’s everything from steaming, boiling, eating it raw, grilling and sautéing. When you mix it with other ingredients like soy sauce, ginger, garlic, oyster sauce or sesame oil – yum, yum — truly mouthwatering.
Supposedly, bok choy is one of the oldest cultivated vegetables in the world.
There are a ton of tasty recipes that include bok choy. Recipes like sesame ginger bok choy, hoisin-glazed pork bok choy, stir-fry baby bok choy, lemon garlic bok choy — there’s even bok choy and wild mushroom soba noodle soup.
“If you learn a recipe, you can cook the recipe. If you learn the technique, you can cook anything.” – Michael Symon
This week, I’m going to make an easy recipe that’s called “bok choy chicken” which should take about 20 minutes to make. You will need six ounces of boneless, skinless chicken cut into small pieces, two tablespoons of oil, eight ounces of bok choy sliced into pieces, one piece of ginger that’s about an inch thick, peeled and chopped into small pieces. Your marinade consists of a half teaspoon of soy sauce and a half tablespoon of cornstarch. The sauce includes half a tablespoon of oyster sauce, two tablespoons of water, a quarter teaspoon of sesame oil, one teaspoon of white vinegar, half a teaspoon of sugar and pepper.
Have you heard this one before? It was one of my Grandma’s favourite jokes: A women asks her husband to get a cabbage from the garden for dinner. He goes out and has a fatal heart attack. Her shocked friend asks, “what did you do?” The woman replies, “what could I do, I opened a can of peas.”
First things first, marinade your chicken for 10 minutes. Feel free to let it sit longer if you prefer. Heat oil in a pan and fry your chicken until it turns white, then take it out and set it aside in a separate dish.
Put more oil in the pan, add the ginger and fry for about 30 seconds until it’s fragrant. Put the chicken back in the pan and add the bok choy. Make sure you don’t overcook the bok choy. A perfectly cooked bok choy should be tender but crisp, not soggy. This is where the good ol’ taste test comes in. Once you’re happy with the result, dish it up and serve immediately.
“I don’t want to look back and think, I could have eaten that.” — Unknown
Like ordering from a Chinese restaurant, it’s a dish you can eat on its own, with rice or noodles. Either way, bok choy is definitely fit to eat. If you haven’t made something like this before, give it a try.
Erin Sulley is a self-confessed foodie who lives in Mount Pearl.
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Twitter: @ErinSulley
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