{"id":314,"date":"2010-01-02T19:18:02","date_gmt":"2010-01-03T03:18:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dianafoss.com\/blog\/2010\/01\/choi-sum\/"},"modified":"2011-01-31T13:57:41","modified_gmt":"2011-01-31T21:57:41","slug":"choi-sum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/dianafoss.com\/blog\/2010\/01\/choi-sum\/","title":{"rendered":"Choi sum"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I wake up on farm workday mornings and lie in bed thinking of what to cook for lunch. I have particular limitations about what I consider a meal, and, soups aside, I usually feel compelled to incorporate starch or protein with the veggies. I made (whole wheat, perhaps not entirely authentic) steamed buns filled with choi sum at the last workday of 2009, but I decided to switch cuisines and make pasta today.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm5.static.flickr.com\/4018\/4239434538_f61ee98bd5.jpg\", witdth=\"400\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Choi sum is a variety of mustard, but the flowering stalks are the peccant part. They have an incredible flavor, without a trace of mustardy bitterness, but a full, savory deliciousness. Two weeks ago, they were just starting to bloom; today I got a big bowl full. The purple stems are beautiful against the green leaves.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm3.static.flickr.com\/2498\/4238660677_9500e6ec43.jpg\", width=\"400\"\/><\/p>\n<p>I chopped them up while the onion was frying.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm3.static.flickr.com\/2772\/4239436126_161c388400.jpg\", with=\"400\"\/><\/p>\n<p>(Every single time I start to cook something at the farm, I start by frying onions in olive oil, and immediately I get appreciative comments.)<\/p>\n<p>I decided I wanted a bit of bitterness, so I picked some other greens, too. (Here they are posing with the onion.)<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm5.static.flickr.com\/4063\/4239435734_2bcc0bf81c.jpg\", width=\"400\"\/><\/p>\n<p>I added the chopped greens to the pan with the fried onion.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm5.static.flickr.com\/4048\/4239436606_f5afdceafa.jpg\", width=\"400\"\/><\/p>\n<p>And then I stopped taking photos of food. But I seasoned these greens with salt and dried, crushed chiles and served them with pasta. Somehow the cooking went faster than it usually does, so I then got out a largish acorn squash, peeled and seeded it, and cooked it in lots of olive oil, too, again seasoned with salt and chiles. And then I went and picked a couple of pretty lettuces and made a salad. We switched the workday to Saturday, which prevented Todd from coming until he reorganizes his own schedule, so we didn&#8217;t get his usual bounty. But there was lots of lovely bread, both beer- and corn-, and everyone got plenty to eat.<\/p>\n<p>After lunch, a peacock was displaying for a peahen, but kept turning away from me when I tried to get a photo of him, so I had to settle for taking a picture of his butt.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm3.static.flickr.com\/2778\/4239511494_af515c4c2d.jpg\", width=\"400\"\/><\/p>\n<p>And all of the geese and ducks took a field trip away from their pond, and then came back in a honking, waddling line, with the chickens and guinea fowl straggling along.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm3.static.flickr.com\/2718\/4238737229_e9019a823a.jpg\", width=\"400\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"entry-summary\">\nI wake up on farm workday mornings and lie in bed thinking of what to cook for lunch. I have&hellip;\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/dianafoss.com\/blog\/2010\/01\/choi-sum\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &ldquo;Choi sum&rdquo;<\/span>&hellip;<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-veggielution","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/dianafoss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/dianafoss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/dianafoss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dianafoss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dianafoss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=314"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/dianafoss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/dianafoss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dianafoss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dianafoss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}