super simple garlic stir-fried kailan

This is a super simple veggie dish that takes literally minutes from start to finish, and will be a great accompaniment to noodles, rice, or potatoes. it's that versatile.

I'm using kailan, or Chinese broccoli. It's one of my favorites because the stem is sweet and crunchy; you want to retain that crunch when you cook it. It tastes like broccoli, but flavor and texture-wise, it's more superior. But you can substitute this dish with broccoli in a pinch.

Our kailan was flowering. so pretty! Too bad, you're going to be scalded in a pot of hot water soon. Heh heh heh.

I like to splice the stems so they cook thoroughly and are done the same time the leaves are done. That way you get fresh, lively-tasting veggies, not veggies that have been boiled to the point of death. Or as the Phantom of the Opera would say, "past the point of nooooo retuuuuurn.."

To do this, just slit the stem in half lengthways, and then slice them again to make quarters, but only slice about halfway through the stem so basically, half of the stem would be whole, a quarter will be sliced in half, and the last quarter is quartered. Just look at the one stalk at the bottom of the turquoise cutting pad above if you are confused.

I also pull of all the larger leaves and cut them in half lengthways. That way you don't have huge pieces of leaves in your mouth at one go.

Rinse them well in water. Sometimes they can be dusted in dirt.

Bring just enough water to cover them to a boil, and once at rapid boil, chuck all your vegetables in. Once the water comes back to a rapid boil, shut your burner off, and drain the water off.  The remaining water will steam up and keep your dish nice and moist.

Return your pot to the still-hot stove, add a tablespoon or two of your delicious garlic oil, season with salt, or if you prefer, soy sauce or even oyster sauce (very Cantonese), mix it up, and serve! *

It's really that simple. You just use the residual heat from your stove top to heat up the oil and mix your veggies up to coat them in the garlicky, salty goodness.  Today it is eaten as part of our lunch together with savory steamed fish and a peppery pork-rib soup.

* When do you use which? I tend to prefer salt over soy sauce for simple vegetable dishes. When the accompanying dishes are as light-tasting as our lunch was, I would just use salt. If not, the flavors of the oyster sauce might over-power the fish. I am a sucker for oyster sauce though. I'd lick it straight out of the bottle at times. Shhhhhhh..

beet tops beats beets

so many things have happened since, so how about a little pictionary to get us going?

So? So? Did you get it??? 

HEH HEH HEH. Like my girl Beyonce always said ,"if you like it then you should have put a ring on it". 

Ok. Back to food. 

Today I really want to talk about beets. Specifically, beet tops. We were at the farmer's market last weekend just browsing and enjoying ourselves, and towards the end, before we were going to leave for brunch (me hungry) my future mother-in-law thought we should get some nice red beets to roast for a salad. Good idea! I thought to myself, and since we were running out of time, I volunteered to quickly run and get some.

I had seen two farmers set up tables side by side, both full of deep red beets, so I made a bee-line straight for them. But when I got there, I was stunned with the ethical decision of which farmer to purchase from. I mean, how to do buy from one farmer and not the other? Especially when they were both looking at me, hoping to make the sale? I mean, one guy's bundles had bigger beets than the other, but is that reason enough to purchase from him? Could my greed for big beets truly lead me to prefer one person's contributions over another's? 

I mean, it basically looked like this: 

To a normal person, this should be a no-brainer. But I am no normal person. No, I'm Michelle Lee. 

Disclaimer: neither of them were pushy with me. They just had large, soulful yet kindly eyes that only hardworking farmers could possess, encased by crinkled, weathered skin full of crows-feet from toiling under the hot midwestern sun. Inside, my heart was crumbling like a nice, crumbly blue cheese. 

Damn this shit! It was hard. So I lingered, glancing surreptitiously from pile to pile, trying to make my mind up. Jeez man, it was a toughie. I mean, I've been through moral dilemmas deciding which orange to buy at the grocery store, but this, this was something else. This brought shopping to a whole new level of depravity. 

So I decided to test their culinary knowledge. I asked the dude on the right (the guy with the smaller beets) "Are these tops edible?", and he told me, fingering them gorgeous leaves with fat, dirt-encrusted fingers that yep, they were edible, just cut them off just after the leaves because the stems were too fibrous, and you can stir fry them with garlic and whatnot. 

"mmmmm", said my brain. Some of my garlic oil, a scattering of salt, maybe some bacon?

"I"LL TAKE 'EM!" I blurted out, even before I had started on a mental pros and cons list of which dude to buy from*. Shit.

Well, I can't undo what I said, so I handed over my four bucks and accepted my load. I looked at it. the beets were small and looked like they would have benefitted from another week in the ground. And then I glanced over again at the forlorn, defeater farmer to my left. (He was still smiling, bless his heart) His beets were bigger. Shit.

Curse me and my desire to make ethical choices! If I had gone with a caveman-eque instinct of bigger= better, I would have made an instantaneous, totally gratifying decision of buying the bigger beets. And yet I let myself be lowered into the pit of trickery by my own mind.

"These tops better be edible" I grumbled to my brain myself, and stalked off. **

 

Look at how beautiful these leaves are! They were seriously crisp after rinsing them in cold water-- they would literally shatter if I exerted too much pressure on the leaves. 

 

We had them for lunch the next day. Totes delicious. It tastes really earthy, like spinach. The deep red from the veins leach out, painting the whole dish a pretty pink.  This picture is from the end of the meal.

Here's the recipe. 

I highly recommend you get some fresh beets from your farmer's market for the freshest, most pesticide-free tops. 

Have you NOT had beets before??? Well, then, go get some. NOW! They are healthy, delicious, (insert: SUPPORT LOCAL!!!) and there are so many ways to eat them! I particularly like them roasted and then sliced up and served with meatballs, olives, some good bread and garlic oil for a light lunch. Or grated raw into a salad. Or boiled and cubed or pickled or pureed into a soup. 

Sautéed Beet Tops 

Serves 2-4 depending on the number of side dishes and how big (duh) your bunch of greens are

Ingredients:

A big bunch of beet greens, trimmed off where the leaves start, rinsed in cold water
1 tbs garlic oil
a generous pinch of salt
1/2 Chinese preserved sausage (I'm sure bacon or even Italian sausage would be a great sub) sliced thinly on the diagonal ***

Method:

Chop your beet leaves in bunches to a coarse chiffonade. So each leave is chopped approximately to 5 pieces lengthwise? Does that make sense? Will this picture below help? Can you see how this is one bunch and I went through from right to left making 5 cuts across the whole bunch from top to bottom?

Bring a heavy skillet to medium heat, when it starts to smoke, add your meat, stir to prevent burning. You can choose to either wipe off the oil rendered, or leave it as is. I choose to drain it off, because we eat a lot of animal fat is it is already, and I have this strange conviction that this grease is thicker and slicks heavier than vegetable oil. Don't want it here.

Add your garlic oil, let it brown, and add your salt now. It allows the salt to disperse around the leaves better, and you don't get some clumps of super salty leaves, and clumps of tasteless leaves.

Add your beet greens here, and stir vigorously. These leaves cook extraordinarily fast-- faster than spinach-- so a minute or two is sufficient on the stove. Once they wilt, immediately turn the heat off and keep on stirring. They will cook down quickly. Do not overcook. This photo below shows when it is done.

Serve as a side accompaniment to other dishes. Enjoy!

*for your info, this would have included the model and conditions of their trucks parked behind them, their wives' look and demeanor, their clothing and their personality. I mean, I'm SOOOO not shallow.


** maybe my brain had the last laugh-- the tops turned out to be a super delicious mistake. Fine, brain, you win.


*** I like Chinese sausage here because it's slightly sweet. If you use bacon, fry it til crisp, and then cut it up. If you are using Italian sausage, maybe you can consider making this dish with cubed potatoes? Somehow I think that some potato would be needed for that.