HDYGG: When Life Gives You Bok Choy

06/07/2011

HDYGG: When Life Gives You Bok Choy

Helen Jupiter

A couple of months ago I bought a few seedlings from the grower at the Culver City Farmers' Market. They were labeled as mesclun, which is a salad mix of assorted small, young salad leaves. I brought them home, planted them in my garden, and waited eagerly for tender, mixed baby greens. Instead, they grew into tough, dense, cabbage-like plants.

I thought it was odd, but hey, they had been labeled "mesclun," so I assumed it was just some variety of lettuces that I wasn't familiar with.

This was silly for a host of reasons. Mesclun may have originated in Provence, France (trivia!), but it's right at home here in La La Land. It's on just about every restaurant menu from the LA River to the Pacific Ocean (OK, that might be a minor exaggeration, but just minor), and they sell it in bags and bulk at the supermarket. All of this is to say, I know what mesclun looks like. I eat it regularly. I'm a big fan.

So, you'd think that when my alleged mesclun started looking more like, oh, I don't know... bok choy? I might have thought to myself, "Hmm, this looks like bok choy. I guess it was labeled wrong. But yay, bok choy is delicious! What a happy surprise!"

Instead, I kind of cocked my head to one side, then the other, furrowed my brow, raised an eyebrow...and then harvested the bok choy as if it were lettuce.

Then I made a salad. With raw bok choy. There were also a couple of other unidentified Chinese-style greens that had grown out of the purported mesclun. I harvested those like lettuce and put them in the salad, too.

Let me tell you, my friends: It was a bitter, bitter, rugged, intense salad. It was the most hardcore salad that has ever crossed my lips. I do not recommend raw bok choy salads. Even if you're hardcore into raw food, limit your raw bok choy intake. For reals, people: This little old lady almost died from eating too much raw bok choy. I am lucky to be alive.

Here's what the bok choy looked like growing in my garden:

So, you might be wondering how I finally figured out that the mystery mesclun was actually bok choy. Well, over the past couple of weeks, a few people have visited my garden and asked what it was.

"Mesclun," I told them, and they sort of looked at me funny and said things like, "Oh, really? Weird, it looks like cabbage."

Finally, this past Saturday, my friend Katherine came by for an overdue visit. Touring the garden, she happened upon the bok choy.

"Ohh, bok choy," she exclaimed in delight. "Yum!"

"Oh my word," I said. "That's bok choy? Leapin' lizards, that's bok choy!"

Suddenly, everything made sense. I felt as thought a mist was lifted. It was a bok choy revelation.

Here's what it looked like when I harvested it:

Here's what it looked like once I'd trimmed off the outer leaves and cleaned it up. Now it's ready to be chopped for a stir fry:

Oh, by the way: I do have mesclun growing it my garden. It was growing right next to the bok choy. I grew it from seed sown about a month ago:

Sometimes, reality can be staring you right in the face and you still miss it.

For those unfamiliar with bok choy, it's a variety of Chinese cabbage. It's easy to grow as a cool season crop, and it does well in container gardens. It's also succulent and delicious when cooked. The moral of the story: When life gives you bok choy, make a stir fry--not a salad.

25 Comments

TAGS: bok choy cabbage chinese helen jupiter how does your garden grow magritte mesclun stir fry vegetables

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08/28/2011
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06/21/2011
Lucie
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Chances are the bitterness of your Chinese salad comes from the other greens you put in it. Not from bok choy. Bok choy has a very mild flavor and the leaves are actually pretty soft, much like lettuce. The stalks I cut in thin strips and they remind me of cucumber... I eat raw bok choy several times a week all year round, and I'm still walking this earth!
06/10/2011
Teresa
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Gotta love a good garden mystery! I wouldn't fancy myself a huge bok choy fan, but - wow - your picture is beautiful.
06/10/2011
Team LucaMilla
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So glad you solved your garden mystery. And that stir fry looks exquisite, to say nothing of the raw and beautiful bok choy.
06/09/2011
Andrea Bellamy
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Cute! I live in a neighbourhood that has many new immigrants; bok choy is a common sight in their wonderful back-alley gardens, but so are many other Asian veggies that I simply cannot identify (and my neighbours can only tell me their Chinese names...that is, if they even have English names). They've given me many seedlings over the years, and I've happily grown them...but when to harvest and how to eat is always sort of a happy mystery. Your bok choy looks perfect, by the way.