Sung Choi Bow

I have been sitting here wondering what to write about this dish for the better part of two hours now. There is no story behind why I made this dish, no particular vegetable that I had been waiting all year to come in to season, no charming childhood memory about how I sat at my grandmother's side and watched her make this from a recipe passed down from generation to generation…

So, no. I am writing about this dish because this is a dish that I make at least once a fortnight; we just can’t get enough of it. I love the fact that you can pack so many vegetables in to the one dish, I also love the fact that I can practice my chopping skills on all the veggies, but one of the best things about this dish is that it is a way for me to eat water chestnuts.

It is not the flavour that I look forward to when cooking with them, because frankly there is not a lot going on in the flavour department when you eat these on their own. 
It is because of the texture. They are both crunchy & soft and yielding at the same time. They make me very happy when I have a couple in a mouthful. Because of the simple pleasure it brings me, I make sure that I don't chop them too finely and I use heaps! I feel very deprived if I order this dish in a Chinese restaurant and they skimp on the water chestnuts, or worse still, leave them out all together! I guess that is why I make it so frequently at home, I can put in whatever I like.

Actually, come to think about it, this dish really has a lot going for it than just the water chestnuts. Crispy, icy-cold lettuce cups with hot, tender pork mince and oodles of veggies that have been cooked at different times to ensure that each ingredient retains its own unique taste and texture. This is pretty smashing as an entrée, but have a go at eating it as a dish in its own right. And with little carbs in there, it really just gives you licence to enjoy this with a refreshing cold beer.

Sung Choi Bow

Adapted from Simple Chinese Cooking by Kylie Kwong

The below will make 4 cups which is great for an entrée for two. Just double it if you are planning on having this as a main meal (try it). The vegetables listed below are what I used at the time. This recipe is easily adapted to suit whatever vegies you have hanging out at the bottom of your crisper. Just leave out the pork if you are a vegetarian.


4 iceberg lettuce leaves
3 small purple carrots, finely chopped - use normal orange ones, I just had these on hand
4 fresh shitake mushrooms stems removed and finely chopped into strips
2 bulbs of spring garlic finely sliced - or one clove of garlic finely chopped
3 spring onions- finely sliced, reserve some of the green for later
1/2 yellow capsicum- small dice
1/2 red capsicum- small dice
About 8 water chestnuts, roughly chopped
8 baby corn, chopped
1 thumb of grated fresh ginger
good handful of bean shoots
coriander or Vietnamese mint, finely chopped (I didn't have coriander at hand and the Vietnamese mint was beautiful!)
250g of pork mince
About 2 tbsp of shao hsing wine or dry sherry
About 1 tbsp of light soy sauce
About 1 tbsp of oyster sauce
1 tbsp vegetable oil or peanut oil
1 tspn brown sugar
1/4 tspn sesame oil

1. Carefully pull the lettuce leaves off the head of iceberg and put in a bowl of iced water, chill in the fridge for a hour.
2. Heat the vegetable oil in a wok and add the ginger, whites of the spring onion and garlic, stir.
3. Add the pork and the carrot and stir fry for about 20 seconds to brown the meat
4. Add the mushrooms, capsicum, water chestnuts and baby corn.
5. Add the wine, oyster sauce, sugar and soy sauce and stir fry until the meat is cooked through.
6. Add the bean shoots and the green of the spring onion, stir to combine
7. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the mixture from the wok to a bowl. Garnish with the chopped Vietnamese mint or coriander.
8. Serve with the drained lettuce leave. Spoon some of the mix into a leaf and roll it up. 
9. Serve. Goes beautifully with a good cold beer while you crunch into it!

My Very First Soufflé

So I made my first soufflé. 
It was a little too brown on top but overall I am pretty chuffed with the result. I mean, they actually rose!
It was a savoury soufflé with chedder, spinach and spring garlic. 
Spring garlic, you ask? You have never heard of spring garlic? Well, gather around and let me tell you all about this amazing vegetable and how I came to hold some in my hot little hand.
For those following, you may remember that I am in the process of cultivating my own crop of garlic, and in a moment of impatience I called my garlic guru aunt "J" to find out if I can pick it now. "Well, you could, she said, but it would be spring garlic which is very nice... but you have to wait until December to have the fully grown garlic bulbs."
Sigh. December is ages away. I am over the imported garlic that the shops are trying to flog to me and yet I am not prepared to give up one of my 5 garlic plants to try this Spring Garlic. It looked like I would have to be patient.
That is until I went to J's house in Orange the other weekend. She has about 30 garlic plants just growing away there. I had garlic envy. 

J, being the lovely aunt that she is, gifted me with 3 bulbs of spring garlic so that I could try it without breaking into my stash. She also gave me a dozen freshly laid eggs from her chickens to take back to Sydney.
Spring garlic, also known as green garlic, is when the plant has formed a bulb but has yet to seperate into cloves or develop a papery skin. Often gardeners will harvest spring garlic as a way of thinning out the crop which allows for the larger garlic to reach its full size. Apparently these sweet little bulbs are known as a gardener's treat. I can see why. The flavour is still unmistakenly garlic, but subtle and sweet. You would treat it the same way as you would a leek or a spring onion.  

So as I was learning about Spring garlic, the good people over at Delicious Magazine had published a recipe in this month's issue using this vegetable in a soufflé. I had Spring Garlic and I had fresh eggs; it was a no brainer. 

Actually it was a little more stressful than that. All I had ever heard about soufflés is that they are hard. Hard work and hard to make rise. After sitting there for a couple of hours, biting my nails and staring blankly at the recipe and then staring blankly at the eggs, I realised that it was time to get to it and make this thing.  If worse came to worse, I would start over and sacrifice one of my plants.

But I didn't have to. I had the stove on the wrong setting and over-cooked the tops, but I got there in the nick of time to sort that out and they still rose. I was able to taste the beautiful spring garlic, and I reckon that it tasted even better because it was in my first soufflé!

The below recipe calls for 1 large 6 cup ramekin, which I did not have. Instead I used 4, 1 1/2 cup (approx) ramekins and had leftovers which was a shame. As for the chopping of the baby spinach, do yourself a massive favour and throw this in the food processor to chop. You don't need to be worrying yourself with shredding up leaves when you have egg whites to deal with later. Serve and eat immediately, unless you need to photograph them. If you choose to do this, hurry! You are losing precious millimetres from your soufflé!



Spring Garlic Soufflé
Directly made from a recipe by Matthew Evans in the October 2011 issue of Delicious Magazine.


350ml Milk
1 bay leaf
100g unsalted butter
1 large spring garlic, outer leaves removed and bulb and some of stem finely sliced. Can be substituted for 2 cloves of ordinary garlic.
100g baby spinach, finely chopped
50g plain flour
100g finely grated cheddar
25g dried breadcrumbs
6 eggs separated plus 2 extra egg yolks
salt and pepper to taste

1. Pour the milk into a saucepan with the bay leaf and heat until just before boiling point. Take care the milk does not catch on the bottom. Take off the heat and set aside to infuse for around 20 minutes.
2. in a heavy bottomed pan, melt 20g of the butter over a low heat and add the garlic. Stir until soft (about 5 min) and then increase the heat to medium, add the spinach and stir for about 3 minutes to soften. Add 50g of the butter and stir until melted.
3.  Turn the heat to low and add the flour and stir to combine for a minute. It will look like a green paste. Just keep stirring.
4. Very slowly, pour in the milk, taking care to stir out any lumps. Keep pouring until all combined (3 or 4 minutes) and it is smooth and bubbling.
5. Add the cheese, stir to combine and set aside and cool
6. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius
7. Brush your ramekin (or ramekins) with the remaining melted butter and lightly dust the insides with the breadcrumbs
8. Lightly whisk the egg yolks and add to the spinach and garlic mixture. Mix well and season with salt and pepper
9. In a metal or glass bowl, whisk the egg whites until you have stiff peaks and then with a large metal spoon, gradually fold the whites into the garlic and spinach mix. Do not over mix, use a cutting and folding motion with the spoon.
10. Tip the mix into your ramekin/s and place on the middle rack of the oven. 
11. Bake for 40-45 minutes. Serve and eat immediately.