豆苗, Dau Miu, Snow Pea Sprouts, A Vegetable By Many Names

Dau miu: snow pea shoots stir fried with garlic

When I lived in Hong Kong I used to go to many local dim sum restaurants and the people I was with would always order a stir fried green leafy vegetable dish.  It was one of my favorite vegetable dishes there yet I had no idea what it was, and nobody could really explain it in English when asked. Tonight I went to have some crispy duck in London's chinatown...I know, again in Chinatown, I should have rented a place there. There I finally found out that this magnificent dish is actually the shoots from snow pea plants steamed with garlic.

These are one of the most delicious vegetables that can be stir fried and are considered a Chinese delicacy. If you haven't tried this it's a must. I don't remember seeing this on the menu in any Chinese restaurants I've been to in the US, although surely it's available in the Chinatowns of larger cities such as New York and probably available in quite a few places in California. So rather than search through all of the Chinese style restaurants here's a quick little recipe for it.

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Chop Chop Redux

In a previous post (Chop Chop) I detailed a bit of Chinese chop stick etiquette. This post of course left out a huge portion of the chop stick using population; the Japanese and Koreans. Today I am comparing three countries, Korea, China, and Japan, each of which have their own style of chopstick and different etiquette.

Chinese chopsticks are the longest of the 3 styles of chopsticks and have a square end. The material they are made from is typically wood, however they have been made of many different materials from ivory to plastic. There is no definite answer to why they the are longest, but it is said that it is because the Chinese typically share their food. When they sit at the table there are many dishes in the middle and each person pulls a bit of food rather than piling everything they will eat onto their plate as in other cultures. The wider and longer chopsticks make it easier to move food from a bigger serving dish to a smaller eating dish.

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