Overlooked bok choy livens up fried rice recipe

Last Friday, while I was on the mainland, I stopped by the Belfast Farmer’s Market. Once a month they set up in the street between the Post Office Square and what used to be Waldo County’s only stop light at the intersection of Main and High Streets. There was music and a juggler in addition to great food – bread, cheese, meat, mushrooms, honey, preserves and lots of vegetables.

We are all being exhorted to eat more vegetables, particularly the green leafy things like chard and kale. Everyone knows what to do with tomatoes, green beans, and corn, and most of us have broccoli figured out, but some of the other vegetables are stumpers. Most vegetables taste better when they are really fresh, and this is the time of year when we can get veggies grown right here in Maine, picked within 24 hours of sale, and this time of year, some of what local growers offer are those green leafy things that some of us are a little fuzzy on what to do with.

So I asked the nice young man at the Peacemeal Farm booth what vegetables he thought people were puzzled by, he looked around and said: “Bok choy.”

I own up to being surprised. He had beet greens and kohlrabi, and I thought maybe those would have been tough sells. But it turns out that people who know and like beet greens snap them up and they can sell all they grow. Kohlrabi is a funny looking little vegetable, and while I was there a friend of mine came up and asked about the kohlrabi, saying, “what do you do with this?” I told her she could dice it up and roast it in the oven with olive oil and garlic.

But there was this big box of gorgeous bok choy, with bright green leaves and a nice wide spine. I thought for sure that people who were familiar with Asian cooking would buy a ton of it for stir fries or various noodle or rice with vegetable dishes. Guess not.

Maybe that is the problem. If you don’t cook Asian dishes, maybe it wouldn’t occur to you to pick up bok choy which is perfectly good as a kind of substitute for cabbage. Why not a slaw made of shredded boy choy and carrots with your favorite dressing on it? Or how about putting some oil with garlic, onions or shallots in a pan and cooking with shredded bok choy until it is just wilted? If you have something like toasted sesame seed oil, or just sesame seeds, add that to wilted bok choy. When the chard and kale are getting the upper hand in our garden, that is how I cook them.

All this made me think of a variation on fried rice that I make.

I really like to have cooked rice on hand. When I cook rice, I try to cook twice as much as I need, so there are leftovers for a fast stir fry and rice supper, or for fried rice. Fried rice is terrific at absorbing all kind of leftovers and stray bits as long as you don’t get all obsessive about authenticity. Obviously, chicken, pork, tofu, little bits of beef, and most kinds of shellfish but also lots of vegetables, especially greens. So the recipe below will give you the basic fried rice into which you can stir shredded bok choy, or spinach, beet greens, chard, or even kale. I always fry up some onion or scallions, celery, red or green pepper to add, garlic if you like it. If there are leftover green beans, or peas, or carrots, in they go. Jamie is a happy camper if I put in a handful of cashews. We add soy sauce or tamari at the table, sometimes with a little red pepper and garlic paste stirred into it.

Fried Rice

Serve 4.

3 or 4 scallions

2 large eggs

4 tablespoons oil

4 cups cold cooked rice

Half a head of bok choy, shredded

Other vegetables or meat your choice (optional)

Soy sauce

Chop the scallions. Beat the eggs as for scrambled eggs. Heat a wok or large fry pan and put in half the oil and when it is hot, add the eggs, tipping the wok or pan to spread the egg into a large thin layer. Cook until it is firm, then turn out onto a cutting board. Put the rest of the oil into the pan, and add the rice, stir frying it until it is hot through. Meanwhile, shred or break up the cooked eggs. When the rice is completely heated, add the shredded bok choy and other ingredients. Sprinkle and stir in soy sauce or tamari until the rice is a light brown, and stir fry until everything is hot, then add the eggs and scallions.

Looking for … Any other tried and true things to do with bok choy? Maybe one of you has something you always make using it that you could send along to share here.