steamed big head vegetable with beef 大頭菜篜午肉

One of my recent passion in cooking of Chinese cuisine is to visit dishes that have very little exposure outside of Asia. Many of these are popular regional dishes ate by families at home. While you may find them in some restaurants they are more like home cooking.

Recently I was shopping at my Asian seafood store. The shop lady has this salted vegetable that caught my eye each time I shop there. Problem is each package are bigger than I want to keep at home. It is a preserved root vegetable called dai tao choy 大頭菜 - translates as big head vegetable. It is really just a kind of big turnip called kohlrabi preserved in a lot of salt. The thought of using it to make a very savory dish nudged me to buy a 2.25 lb package.

this is a half of salted kohlrabi weight in at 2.25 lb

The salted kohlrabi comes in a plastic bag which you can tell was repackaged from bulk. Through the plastic bag I could tell it is of good quality.

The most common use of this salted kohlrabi is to prepare a steam dish with meat such as pork, chicken, or beef. Because the salt content the dish requires no seasoning (salting).  I decide to use beef and a bit of sea shrimps.


i slices the salted kohlrabi into very thin sheets, then julienned them into narrow strip; i used only an once or two for this dish

rinse them in water to remove the excessive salt

i like heat so i slice a Korean hot pepper into very thin pieces

marinated beef

there are shitake mushroom, beef, bits of shrimps, cooking oil, sesame oil, a dash of sugar (to balance out the salt) and kohlrabi all mixed well waiting to be steamed

 

I steam it for 9 minutes and then thicken the juice with corn starch. Then transferred them to a ceramic serving dish lined with blanched Napa cabbage leaves

add a dash of ground white pepper and it is ready

 dishes like this is best enjoyed with a good bowl of plain Thai Jasmine rice

one and a half bowl of rice later there is still so much left - because it is rather salty you eat very little (a great dish for those on a weight loss regiment)

 what is left after one meal; it is one ultimate comfort food and is very delicious

So what do I do with the left over salted kohlrabi? I just put them in a zipped lock bag and keep in the refrigerator. It can easily keep well over a year.

If you regularly prepare steam dishes, you owe it to yourself to get one of this grabber from Chinese grocery stores. It is for lifting the hot plate from a steamer.

also a stainless steel that raise the plate from the boiling water on the right is indispensable; with it you can turn any big pot into a steamer

 they comes in different diameters and heights