The Mighty Gai Choy
Gai Choy With Stir-Fried PrawnsIndeed, we are enamored of our new found friend, the Chinese mustard green. So much so, in fact, that we attempted our second recipe involving this spicy, leaf-ed vegetable this week. Alas, this meal was a dud. It didn’t taste bad (after all, there were shrimp involved) but it was nothin’ to write home about.
Plus, there was the frustration factor to consider: we were using pointy-ended, Japanese chopsticks and trying to eat non-sticky rice. The result is that the two of us were practically licking the saucy rice out of the bowls because we couldn’t pick it up. Marc will deny this and say that I was the only one having trouble because I haven’t had enough practice using chopsticks. I am DEEPLY offended by this as I have been using chopsticks since I was six* and the difficulty encountered during this meal was not a result of operator error. It shall be noted that I was not the only one trying to eat while trying to look around the bowl in order to see the TV. So, there.
What We Drank: water – a direct result of Eric & Robyn’s wedding the previous evening. (The red wine made me perform a skit in front of the wedding guests. It shall not be forgiven for this.)
* To broaden our wee horizons when we were little, my Mom once made Chinese food at home. Take into account that this was Alberta in the 1980s and we may or may not have had very little exposure to anything close to Asian culture. To counter that, Mom made an evening of it; this involved taking the legs off the kitchen table so we could eat cross-legged on the floor, wearing our bathrobes and wide-brimmed hats made out of brown paper grocery bags stapled together (to simulate traditional Chinese dress, I assume), and using chopsticks. So, there.
Update: The fish sauce we purchased from the T&T Market may not have been the best choice. It was too fishy, salty and sweet, which is exactly what was wrong with the dish. The supermarket variety appears to be watered down and doesn’t quite have the same flavour.