Fresh Pak Choi/ Bok Choy (2 Bunches)
Pak Choi, also known as Bok Choy, is a leafy green from the cabbage family. Pak Choi is a traditional Asian ingredient, so is often served with Asian flavours such as soy sauce, miso, lemongrass or galangal.
Pak Choi is suited to both raw and cooked applications such as steaming, boiling, grilling, braising, and sautéing. When used raw, the stalks and leaves can be shredded and mixed into slaws, or chopped and added to salads for a crunchy bite. However, Pak Choi is most popularly used in cooked applications and can be sliced and incorporated into soups and stews.
How to cook Pak Choi
Pak Choi is a kind of 2-in-1 plant – the dark, thin leaves that sprout at the top cook very quickly and are akin to spinach in consistency. The thicker stalk is firm, crunchy and refreshing. For this reason, it can be tricky to judge the cooking time of Pak Choi – a good option is to separate the leaves from the stalks and cook the stalks for a couple of minutes, adding the leaves in the last few seconds to wilt down.
Blanching, stir-frying and steaming are all excellent methods for cooking Pak Choi, as the flavours are retained nicely. Be careful not to overcook or you will lose that refreshing crunch from the stalk which makes a great contrast to rich, sticky, sweet-and-sour dishes. Though usually make from napa cabbage, kimchi, the Korean dish of fermented cabbage, can also be made with Pak Choi.
