Bok choy, baby

This weekend past found me in the produce section of my grocer’s, undecided and a little bored. What to cook this week? Broccoli – again. Green beans – again. Asparagus – yawn. I turned away, walked a couple of paces, and stared down at a vegetable I’d never used before. I picked it up, and suddenly heard Ted Allen’s voice in my head:

How inventive were you in your use of the mystery ingredient?

Well, Ted, I thought, let’s find out.

The ‘mystery ingredient’ in this case was baby bok choy, a dwarf or immature version of the larger Chinese/snow cabbage, and easily the sexiest looking item in the produce section. (Sorry, tomatoes.) To find a recipe for my inaugural effort with the ingredient, I turned to the Internet, which yielded up “Bacon-y Bok Choy” from All Recipes. When venturing into uncharted territories, it’s always comforting to be accompanied by an old friend. Like bacon.

I could have used the bok choy whole or sliced in half lengthwise for aesthetics, but I opted to play it conservatively and chopped it up. I followed the recipe faithfully except for the length of the last stage of cooking: while the instructions call for two more minutes over medium heat after removing the lid of the pan, I found that the bok choy was “tender but still crunchy” right then, no further cooking required.

How was the dish received? Let my wife’s reaction speak for it:

I like it!

Heat from red pepper flakes, savour from bacon, mild sweetness from the vegetable itself. It was delicious. Delicious! “A nice change,” said M, which is just what I had been looking for. Any doubts I may have had were erased when she went back for seconds on the bok choy and finished it up. Filing this recipe away for future reference.

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