We ate all the outside leaves of the young pak choi, mostly in won tons but also in soups and stir fries. Then I left them to flower and the tiny, stingless native bees feasted on the flowers, giving us tiny amounts of absolutely delectable light champagney honey. Then I let them set seed before feeding them, mature seeds and all, to the chooks.
Which is a two part dish, consisting of an Asian style omelette in a mildly ginger laced vegetable stock sauce. It’s surprisingly addictive! I used duck eggs for this one, just because we have them, but chook eggs work just as well.
End of winter, it’s been a hard few months, and I don’t often get sick, but I feel like I might. Phó is my go-to dinner when I feel like I need to ward off I-don’t-know-what. This isn’t a real Phó, but it’s got that ginger/garlic/chili/anise/cinnamon/lemon grass spice profile that my immune system seems to crave.
Sometimes I make something and I think, I know with practice that could be easy, but it is nice enough to be bothered practicing? This one made it through the test. If you are really pressed for time you can use bought wonton wrappers. I find them in the fridge section in my supermarket.
Chooks are such a good way to double the harvest. These bok choy were self sown and if I’d been pressed for space I would have fed them to the chooks as greens much earlier. We ate a few leaves, but then since I had nothing desperately needing the spot I let them go to seed – which they did very happily, producing lots and lots of seed (which is…
I’m not a huge fan of tofu because soy beans contain a number of compounds that can cause health problems, it takes a fair amount of processing to get tofu from soy beans, and they are one of the most genetically modified and unsustainably farmed crops on the planet. Nutrisoy and Soyco are a couple of brands that don’t use genetically modified soy beans.