Wednesday, January 23, 2019

dish with home made sour mustard green 自製鹹酸菜 - part 1

I have been really looking forward to make dishes with my first batch of home made sour mustard green 自製鹹酸菜. Today I gathered a few ingredients that I have in the refrigerator, all of which were not pre-planned with any dish in mind. I made this stir fried dish using some sour mustard green. I've loved Chinese sour mustard green ever since a kid.

Chines sour mustard green is made in a process similar to how you would make sauerkraut, or kimchi. Across the world there must be countless fermented vegetable that is made in this basic fermentation process. For me I like my sour mustard green crunchy, with the right balance of tang and hint of saltiness. In Chinese our mustard green is call salty and sour vegetable 鹹酸菜.

I used this Korean onggi to make my sour mustard green; this photo was taken a few days in and the mustard green wasn't quite ready yet

I transfer them into this glass jug after 7 days - they are still a bit green

7-day young sour mustard green

Today most of the batch are quite ready and taken on a light greenish brown. I wanted to make a dish with some marinated lean pork. It is a free form dish made with just a vague recipe that I imagined.

The ingredients are:

  • sliced lean pork
  • sour mustard green
  • braised shiitake mushrooms
  • braised black cloud ear fungus
  • celery heart (I use celery from outside in)
  • fermented soy bean paste
  • cooking oil
  • Chinese yellow cooking rice wine
  • oyster sauce
  • soy sauce
  • salt
  • sugar
  • cornstarch
  • ginger slices
  • scallions

A bit of sugar is use to balance out the sourness of the mustard green. I intended to make the dish somewhat hot from the fermented soy bean paste. It turned out I should have added some dried ground chili pepper.

these are more the less most of the ingredients ready to be stir fried

this is the resulting dish - eaten with a bowl of Thai Jasmine rice; so yummy

The home made sour mustard green is a resounding success. I will never buy from the store again except in a pinch. I have seen a lot of store bought ones has food coloring, or processed with harmful chemicals and preservative. Why I didn't learn this sooner, but better late than never.

There are countless dishes can be made with this humble fermented vegetable. Just go search on Google "鹹酸菜" and enjoy some selected images of wonderful and healthy dishes.

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