I've never tried to hide the fact that I think the way we experience food is dictated by the circumstances within which it is eaten. An apple rapidly devoured during a mad dash for an incoming bus is a wholly different fruit to one that you let yourself gradually sink your teeth into as you stare into a morning sky as blue and full of birds as the Twitter logo. Sure, they could be exactly the same fruit - same freshness, same firmness, same pesticides or lack thereof, nevertheless the two experiences are totally divorced from one another.
I'm not sure how many will agree, but I don't particularly enjoy "on-the-go" food, even if we disregard the whole face-mask situation we're currently encumbered with. Perhaps it makes us feel like the perfect capitalist citizens we're all destined to be, but food consumed at high speed just doesn't taste same, right? Being in a state of unemployment and, prior to that, on furlough means that I haven't been frequently dealing with this issue for a fair few months, however it's recently come to my attention that I have a pretty pernicious compulsion to be doing something while I eat my food. Because, y'know, contributing to healthy human nourishment just isn't productive enough to cut it.
Don't get me wrong, I don't expect myself to uncover the key to global nuclear disarmament over a slice of toast and a cup of tea, but usually I'll have prepared something for myself to read, listen to or watch at the same time. If, through some freak lapse of foresight, I happen to forget to make these necessary preparations then I'll often end up scrolling through my Instagram feed, which I don't think has ever left anyone feeling particularly satisfied. Most of the time, randomly questing through Instagram feeds feels like trying to remember something you've flat out forgotten. So, this notion of needing to "do something" concurrent to eating isn't predicated on efficiency, it's a well-trodden and reinforced neural pathway paved with nonsense.
Given my tendencies, it felt nothing short of revolution a couple of nights ago for me to attempt to abstain from this habit. I'd made a dinner that wasn't particularly notable (a tin of tomatoes mixed with massaman curry paste and some mixed-vegetables cooked from frozen), but I resolved to let the food be the central focus of the follow ten minutes. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the food in front of me went from being an accompaniment to the centre of my attention; just like the aforementioned apple, it felt as if I tasted a lot more from it when I wasn't simultaneously looking at recipes for other people's food. It's definitely not a stretch of the imagination to think that food can be appreciated to a greater extent when we take the time to treat it as an activity, rather than a simple need to be met.
This isn't to say that food always has to be a stop-n'-breathe exercise. Dinner on the sofa with a movie can be wonderful; reading a book with a steaming bowl of porridge is occasional bliss, and sometimes it does just seem right to read the news with breakfast. Sometimes, the moment present doesn't entirely gel with calm, meditative consumption. Like many things in life (inconveniently) it's all about judging your needs in the moment. I'm sure it will take weeks/months/years/decades (delete as applicable) for this to become fully ingrained in my mind, but I'm going to try to be more conscious about where I'm allocating my focus to.
While we're on the topic of taking things slow, let me tell you where today's recipe was adapted from; a cookbook from 1981. I made Coral-Coloured Cabbage from the late Kenneth Lo's Regional Chinese Cookbook, which I can only imagine was written at a time where the reach of home-cooking didn't extend very far eastwards. I've changed up the formula for a few details such as the addition of a few aromatics, but the recipe is virtually the same in spirit. The dish comes from Tai'an in the eastern Chinese, coastal province of Shandong and Lo recommends this dish to be served "for a banquet or a family party"; given that very few of us are currently able to do this, I'm going to say that this is fine for a weekday dinner.
Cabbages are a staple of the Winter diet throughout much of the province of Shandong, where they are grown to be particularly large and sweet. Don't worry about whether the cabbage you use quite matches the Shandong standard, because the flavour of the dish comes from the sweet, acidic cooking liquid. The cuisine of the province is also reputed for the sophisticated incorporation of vinegar into foods; again, do not be concerned if your vinegar selection is less than extensive as acidity can be achieved in many ways. The main thing we're looking for is a sharpness to cut across and balance the sweetness of the tomato puree which largely defines the flavour profile.
Coral-Coloured Cabbage
Preparation time: 20 minutes
Cooking time: 15 minutes
Serves: 3-4
Ingredients
650-750g of Napa cabbage
130g of white mushrooms
1 large sweet red pointed pepper
140g of bamboo shoots
1 1/2 tsp of fresh ginger
2 cloves of garlic
2 spring onions
1 tbsp of light soy sauce
1 tbsp of granulated sugar
1 tbsp of rice wine vinegar
1/2 tbsp of black rice vinegar (chinkiang)
1 tbsp of tomato puree
1/2 tbsp of cornflower
1 tbsp of vegetable oil
1 tbsp of sesame oil
1 tbsp + 1 tsp of salt
Method
Cut off the bottom of the cabbage and turn it sideways. Slice it from the bottom in 1-inch intervals. The way that the leaves of the cabbage are arranged mean that it should naturally fall apart into slices, but if the cross-sections do stay intact then either pull them apart with your hands or slice them further with your knife. Add the cabbage into a large bowl and cover with boiling water, and the tbsp of salt. Let the cabbage sit in the water for 5 minutes before draining off the water and setting aside.
Peel the ginger, before slicing and mincing, then crush each garlic clove and mince it in the same manner. Slice the mushrooms into cross-sections approximately half a centimetre thick, and slice the bamboo shoots into thin matchsticks (some canned varieties will already be in this format). Remove the core and the seeds from the sweet pointed pepper, and then slice the it into matchsticks as well. Finally, take the spring onions and cut them into thin diagonal slices. Set all of the vegetables aside.
Heat the vegetable oil in a large wok over a medium-high heat and when it has come to temperature, add the garlic and the ginger. Fry for 1 minute, before adding in the mushrooms, peppers and bamboo shoots. Sprinkle over the tsp of salt, and saute over a medium-high heat for 5 minutes, stirring frequently.
Add in the cabbage, as well as the soy sauce, tomato puree, sugar and both vinegars and stir through until everything is well incorporated. Take 1 tbsp of the cooking liquid and stir in the cornflower until you have a smooth paste. Add the paste back into the wok, and cook over a medium-high heat for a further 3 minutes. This should thicken up consistency of the liquid somewhat and allow it to adhere to the vegetables more.
Stir in the spring onions and the sesame oil, and cook for a further 1 minute before taking off of the heat. Serve this with rice, or as part of a side dish for a bigger meal.
Notes & Adjustments
For the ingredients that comprise the cooking liquid, it is worth measuring these out and stirring together prior to cooking to save you having to do it while the wok is on the heat.
If you can't find Napa cabbage, I would recommend using white cabbage as it has a similar sweetness. It is also commonly referred to as Chinese leaf.
For the vinegars, if you can't find rice wine vinegar or black rice vinegar then you can substitute with red wine vinegar. If you do this, I would tone down the vinegar to 1 tbsp, as red wine vinegar has a somewhat more acerbic flavour. The rice vinegars can be found in Asian supermarkets, with the former also being found in many mainstream supermarkets (albeit, for a considerably higher price).
Use whatever mushrooms you liked here. The recipe called for 4-6 dried Chinese mushrooms, which I didn't have to hand. Shiitake and oyster have a texture that is closer to re-hydrated mushrooms, but go with whatever is most easily available to you.
If you can't get a sweet pointed pepper, then just a regular one will do.
Comments