Mothers always tell you to eat your vegetables in American culture right? Well, my mom always told me to eat my choy. Choy, in Cantonese (maybe other dialects as well), refers to most types of leafy greens that the we, Cantonese people, often steam. Well, its not so much steaming, but quickly boiling.. like parboiling without the cooking afterwards part. The use of really hot boiling water, and throwing washed and picked greens, like the above choy sum (literally, heart of the greens), until they're just cooked through yet still very tender and crisp, and quickly taking them out again. A light coating of "cooked oil" (my mother always made a huge pot of boiling oil, would fry up a bit of potatoes or garlic into it just for flavor, and then reserve the oil in a bottle specifically for use in this purpose), and soy sauce would complete the dish. It leads to a very pure taste in the greens, not at all overcooked, and leaves a lot of texture to be savoured. Unlike many Western cooked greans, they're not a mashed up pile of.. who knows what. No cheese, no excessive use of cream. Pure, simple, healthy. Its the Cantonese counterpart to a crisp salad, nutrition wise, and is often the primary side-dish to most meals.I was surprised to find this at Korean grocery store.. not so much cause it would be an unlikely candidate of their produce department, but simply that I hadn't seen much of this at all since not living near Chinatown. On my receipt from HanAhReum, this was named yoochoy as well. Never seen it like that before, but perhaps... I looked it up on wikipedia, and apparently its sometimes referred to as yu choy sum, as a whole. Interesting...
Well, this was a half of my lunch.. I made more onigiri today as the starch component of my meal. This time instead of splitting the rice into 3 obscenely large triangles, I went with 4 and decorated each differently. No need for pictures, they were gone immediately :)
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