Quay Po Cooks: mustard green

Showing posts with label mustard green. Show all posts

Monday, April 18, 2011

Stir-fry Mustard Green with Crabmeat

This used to be a common dish served at Chinese Wedding Dinners but not so much now. I wonder why. I like the peppery taste of mustard green and crab meat is my favorite. This is not an easy dish to cook. It is rather difficult to get the right consistency for the gravy but then when you get it right, this is very delicious and worth the effort. I have cooked this twice before. The first time, the gravy was too watery and second time, I could not get a good shot of the dish. Somehow, this is a rather difficult dish to photograph. How about these photos? Are they calling you to try to make this dish?

Adapted from Red Cook
Ingredients:

12 ozs. (or 3 cups cut) mustard green

6 ozs. cooked crabmeat

3 tablespoons vegetable oil

1 teaspoon finely chopped garlic

1 teaspoon finely chopped fresh ginger

3/4 cup chicken stock (or water)

2 tablespoon Shaoxing cooking wine

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon ground white pepper

1/2 teaspoon cornstarch mixed with 3 tablespoons water to make slurry

Method:

Cut the leafy portion of mustard green off, and then cut the green stem into approximately 1.5-inch square pieces. Use fresh or refrigerated cooked crabmeat if available. Otherwise canned crabmeat can be substituted. Heat two tablespoons vegetable oil in a wok until beginning to smoke. Put the mustard green in the wok and add 1/2 cup of stock or water. Cover the wok and simmer over medium heat for about 8 minutes. Stir the vegetable occasionally to make sure it is evenly cooked. When the vegetable is cooked and tender, but not mushy, remove it from the wok along with all the liquid and put it in a bowl. Set aside. Heat another one tablespoon of vegetable oil in the wok and stir-fry the garlic and ginger for about a minute. Add the crabmeat, cooking wine, salt, pepper and the rest of the stock or water. Cook for another two minutes or so and return the vegetable and its liquid into the wok. Thicken the sauce with the cornstarch slurry. Plate and serve immediately.

Note: To make it even more elegant, garnish the dish with a sprinkle of cooked crab roe.

A LITTLE ABOUT THIS QUAY PO

Before I was married to my "Quay Lo" (Guaylo) husband, I did not know how to bake or cook. Subsequently I learned some baking and cooking Western cuisine from him, and providing his food for him launched an interest in cooking in general. Many of my Chinese friends and family told me that "Quay" is the wrong spelling for devil in Cantonese. The right spelling should be "Kwai" or "Guay". Well, somehow I like the spelling "Quay" better although I have to agree that it does not sound very Cantonese. Try asking a Westerner to pronounce "Kwai" and you will probably hear "Quay" haha. Whether is "Quay" or "Kwai" or "Guay, just know the devil woman is me when you see Quay Po Cooks. My hubby said if people pronounce "Quay" as "Key" is even better because I am the key to his heart. LOL!

Only now, have I started to learn the traditional Cantonese cuisine of my Mum. She cooks fabulously and all her specialties are divine. These two interests, my husband's Western food, and my mother's traditional food, prompted me to document them so they will not be lost.

Here, I wish to share my cooking and baking experience with my readers. I also hope to inspire those who do not know how to cook or bake to do so because, trust me, if I can, you can too.

Something I'd like to mention is that I find that many people are rather unwilling to share their recipes. However, for me, I think differently. I think good recipes should be shared thus allowing as many people to enjoy it as possible. Unless those recipes are for doing business, I don't see why we want to keep them all to ourselves. So if you are generous in sharing your recipes, you are welcome to share on my blog. Send the recipes to me and better still with pictures of the final products and I will be very happy to post them them with credits to you of course.

Our cuisine is a deeply embedded part of our culture. When two cultures come together under the same roof the results in the kitchen can sometimes be comedic, sometimes confrontational, but more often it is a journey full of surprises and discovery. There is joy in our food. If we think upon this, it is intuitively obvious. This blog is a journey of joy and sharing, reflecting what the French like to call "joie de vivre" (joy of living). No one could be more different from one another then my husband and my mother. Yet one thing they share in common is knowing intuitively that food, cooking, and sharing can be avenues of joy in life itself. So herein, help yourself, to a little joy and , if you like it, share it with your own family and friends. Joy is something that should be shared.