Ong Choy 蕹菜

I’m just about getting ready to take a trip home to visit family. I don’t get too many chances, but talking about food and cooking with my parents is an easy way to connect with them. My dad said if I wanted to this time, he wants to do things like go grocery shopping me with me so he can point out how to pick produce and show me certain recipes that he’s learned in the past or things he’s currently working on.

According to my dad, there are two kinds of ong choy and what you look for is the color of the stems. There is a white variety where the base of the stem is white. This kind grows in water and is preferred because the stems are more crunchy. The other is a green variety where the stems are green and this grows in soil. The stems are more fibrous and tougher in the green variation.

It might be written in other names in English, but the key thing is to look at the cross section of the stems. The stems are mostly hollow.

Cross-section of the hollow stems to identify ong choy. This is a green variety.

Most of my friends that are first generation tell me that our parents almost never measure seasoning so it’s really intimidating to learn how to cook from our parents. I’ve been trying to think of a dish that’s so easy to make, it’s harder to mess up for a beginner and came with ong choy. There are two common Cantonese ways of preparation and one is with salty shrimp paste. Since I have a crustacean allergy, it’s not worth it for me to make this. The other is with fermented tofu 腐乳 (fu yuh) which I like a lot. You can season and taste as you go along so you can develop the sense of how much to add and eventually cook like our parents do. There’s not a lot of ingredients so it’s really simple as well.

Recipe:

Ong choy
Coarsely chopped garlic
Fermented tofu 腐乳 (fu yuh)
Rice cooking wine

Rinse the ong choy and slice int piece about 3 inches long. Try to set the stems aside from the leaves.

Peel, crush, and coarsely chop garlic. Set aside.

Heat a wok over medium high heat and add neutral oil when it is hot. Add the garlic and stir fry for about 30 seconds until it is fragrant. Add the stem part of the ong choy and stir fry for a few minutes. This dish doesn’t take long to cook.

Add the leaves and toss for about 30 seconds. Add fermented tofu and taste until it is seasoned enough. Add some rice cooking wine as well to taste. The rice cooking wine will clean off some of the funk of the fermented tofu. Depending on how strong your stove is, you can continuously cook it open or cover the wok to cook it faster. Cook for another few minutes until ong choy is wilted and starting to turn slightly tender. The stems should still be very slightly crunchy.