Ever wondered what to do with choi sum? It’s a variety of Asian greens which is closely related to choy som. Very good in a stir fry or blanched but still left a bit crunchy.
This recipe is also a good way to make use of the flower buds of all our brassica/cabbage plants. When they get to the end of their life cycle they produce flower buds. This also happens in times of dry stress or when there is too much sun.
We grow a lot of our brassicas/cabbages (Tuscan and Russian kale, mizuna, choi sum) for their leaves. When they start producing buds and flowers we call this ‘bolting’, ‘going to seed’ or ‘shooting’, and we know there won’t be a lot of new leaves coming any more. If you have a look at the flower buds though you will recognise that they resemble tiny broccoli. No miracle, they are all different cultivars of the same plant. So you can safely harvest those flowers together with about 3 to 5 cm of stem and use them as you would use broccolini.
Ingredients:
- 180 g of salmon filet, skin on, pin boned
- 15 to 20 leaves of choi sum, mizuna
- broccoli or flower buds of any variety of the cabbage/brassica family we grow that start bolting
- snap and snow peas
- 1 long red chili, you can use hotter varieties if you like
- 1 tbsp roughly chopped coriander leaves
- 3 shitake mushrooms remove stem and cut in half (fresh or soak dried mushrooms in hot water for 1 hour)
- 1/4 bunch of enoki mushrooms
- 1 tbsp grated ginger
- 1/2 clove of garlic grated
- juice of 1/2 lime
- 2 tbsp light soy sauce
- a few drops of roasted sesame oil
- 2 tbsp sour creme
- 1/4 to 1/2 tbsp English mustard
Thoroughly clean the greens and cut into bite-size pieces. Chop chili.
Squeeze out the juice of the grated ginger, discard the pulp. Add lime-juice, soy-sauce and grated garlic to the ginger-juice. This dressing should taste salty-sour-hot.
Mix the sour creme with the mustard.
Fry the shitake for a couple of minutes and the enoki for 30 seconds.
Fry the salmon on the skin side in a medium to hot pan. Don’t move it until the skin is crisp and the fish is rare. Flip over and pull of the heat to rest. Let the residual heat of the pan cook it to medium rare.
Blanch all the veggies but keep them crisp, drain and lightly squeeze out the water. Mix with the dressing and arrange on a plate. Put mushrooms on top of the veggies, drizzle with a few drops of sesame oil. Add the salmon and a dollop of sour creme. Scatter with coriander and chili.