"Nothing good will come from getting too fancy with these greens. They bask in simple treatment and become shy when long lists of ingredients appear."
Nigel Slater
I promise I will not mention Nigel again, but his was the only quote I could find that was somehow appropriate. Together with this one, which is also relevant:
"There is little point in taking the trouble to grow our own vegetables unless we can find an adequate technique to get to the heart of the ingredient. ... That is why it is often fascinating and sometimes difficult to cook something you don't know very well, working out the best way to get it to show you its reason for being"
It's relevant because the other day I bought some Asian greens - Pak choy and baby buk choy - both of them like the ones on the left in the photograph, but one larger than the other. Well they were on a special and I had no greens, and I also thought it was time to come to grips with how to deal with all of these Asian greens. After all we live close to Asia and now have a large Asian/Australian population. And last mention of Nigel - in his book Tender Volume 1 - from which those two quotes come - he calls them Chinese greens not Asian greens. Which shows an interesting British perspective on Asia really.
Anyway I now have Asian greens that must be used. But how? Because I'm not very good at improvising stir-fries either. Whereas I can improvise something European, Asia needs recipes. Well it does for me anyway. So first thing this morning I rummaged in the freezer to see what kind of meat might be appropriate and found two sirloin pork steaks - well that's what Coles called them. Pork chops without the bone really which is probably another mistake, because the recipe that I have chosen to make begins with these words:
"Center cut, bone-in pork chops are key, as they have the right amount of fat. The fact that they’re on the bone also means they don’t dry out as quickly when cooked." Kaitlin/Woks of Life
Damn. I actually had some chops too, but at that point in time was thinking I might be needing to cut my meat into smaller pieces and 'steaks' were more suitable than chops. But never mind steaks will have to do.
So, having vowed not to do Nigel or Ottolenghi for a week - probably the rest of this week and all of next now, because COVID has slowed me down somewhat on that resolution as well as everything else - I began searching for other suggestions on the net. And quickly realised that not only had I challenged myself by buying an unusual ingredient - unusual for me anyway - but I also did not have many of the standard ingredients that cropped up - in my pantry. Specifically hoisin and oyster sauces, and chilli sauce as well. Which, it turns out are standard in a whole category of pork stir fries. I actually browsed 6 Google pages - rare for me. I mostly don't go beyond 3 - tops.
Along the way I watched Adam Liaw cook Asian greens just how they do in Chinese restaurants. Soak them, Chop into three sections, boil - one section after another - beginning with the stalks and ending with the leaves, sprinkle oil on top when cooked, and drain. It's a short video - simple but instructive, so I have learnt one basic technique. Somewhere else - I can't remember where now - I saw that you can finish off by then stir frying your greens with some garlic and/or chilli. So today I have learnt something which I really should know. I feel somewhat ashamed of admitting this.
Having browsed Google, and specifically searched what Kylie Kwong, Luke Nguyen, Adam Liaw delicious. and Taste had to offer - well I decided to be loyal to Australia today - and rejected all those recipes requiring things I didn't have, I finally settled on what was actually the first one I looked at - and I will come to it. But first the two also rans and why I didn't choose them.
This is, a Vietnamese dish and was rejected because it is somewhat more involved than my final choice. It comes from a website called House of Greedy - another early view. - who call it Barbecued pork fillet with stir-fried Asian greens & a Vietnamese caramel sauce. Oops - I now see that it is actually a Bill Granger recipe from his Bill's Everday Asian book. So Australian/Vietnamese. It really isn't complicated at all, but I think I still have vestiges of COVID lethargy and so didn't want to take that one little step extra, by making the caramel sauce. I shall make it some other time, and maybe I should try and find that book. I only have one book by the late great Bill Granger, but I do like his food.
My second option was from a website called Gods of Sauces - a commercial site I think that makes sauces. The particular sauce featured here is Korean chilli BBQ sauce and the recipe is for Korean pork chops with Asian greens and lemon coriander rice. The problem here is that sauce. I think you are supposed to buy it, but elsewhere it does list ingredients - soy sauce, brown sugar, sherry vinegar, garlic, ginger, honey, and Chinese 5 spice. No quantities however.
There is a link to the sauce, but it leads to an error page. Now I could obviously have a guess at the ingredients and one day maybe I will, but I went looking and found that there are lots of recipes out there. This is just one from a website called Chilli Pepper Madness, from which you can guess that this is a hot sauce - so also not suitable for that reason. Chilli does not go down well in this house. So the recipe above is probably not a goer at any time.
It is surprising really that there are not more options for Asian greens and pork with the ingredients that I do have. Probably most of you will have hoisin and oyster sauce in your cupboards. I do have soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, rice wine, fish sauce, sesame oil and five-spice powder - well I think I have that. If not I shall have to find a recipe and make some.
So drum roll - the winning recipe. Well winning is not really the thing. The chosen recipe - Asian pork chops - which comes from the very reputable American website The Woks of Life, which I have written about a long time ago. It's written by a family of four - mother, father and two daughters, and this one is from Kaitlin - one of the daughters. It's a family recipe:
"My great grandmother made up the method and taught it to my mom, who taught Sarah and me how to make it. .. when my mom came home after a long day of work and still needed to put a full meal on the table, these Quick and Easy Asian Pork Chops were a regular in her rotation. And not once when these pork chops showed up on the table did anyone complain, because not only were they fast, they were tender and delicious."
30 minutes she says, so I was sucked in - the website is very well-known, it looks great and moreover I have all the ingredients. It also sounds like real food, if you know what I mean. What mum cooks at home without a recipe. When I showed David the picture he was quite enthusiastic. I could try lemon flavoured rice as well - but not with coriander as suggested by the Gods of Sauces, because I have none. The way those greens are cooked is even simpler than Adam LIaw's:
"cook your veggies in the same pan, and bam, dinner is on the table. The veggies soak up all the yummy extra flavor and saves you an extra pan to wash."
David will like that too. I will soak the greens in water for half an hour or so first though, as suggested by Adam Liaw.
So have I learnt anything from all of this? Not a lot probably. I'm pretty sure that, like my husband, I will not be able to resist a bargain if I see one, even if I really know it is going to present problems. It's a simultaneous flaw and a strength of my character. It has higlighted a lack in my storecupboard of some apparently standard Asian ingredients. So let's look at them. I'm actually pretty sure that I once had some chilli sauce and also some hoisin sauce, but they were never used and so years after their use by date I eventually threw them out. So I have to ask myself if the same would happen again if I bought them. Probably I think, so I might wait until I really, really need them. Oyster sauce - well I have an unreasoning repulsion against anything oyster, so I really don't think I can ever bring myself to buy any, even though I have probably unknowingly consumed it in a restaurant somewhere sometime. Does this mean I won't be cooking much in an Asian way? Probably - or at least the Asian food I cook will be limited to dishes without them. I think I may well be cooking with more Asian greens however. They seem to be relatively simple. And I do like them.
We shall see.
LONG AGO
November 28
2020 - Broad beans
2019 - Nothing
2018 - 'Simple' 1 - short on time
2017 - Target reached - so?
2016 - Comfort food and comfort
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