A CHINESE VEGETABLE POTPOURRI - Growing Chinese Vegetables in Your Own Backyard - page 116

• Grated radish instead of sauerkraut on a hot dog is a whole new ball game.
COOKED . Another new world opens up the minute you realize that radishes are good
cooked:
• Stir-fry with cucumber and chives and a little garlic in Asian sesame oil; add a
little chicken broth, cover, and simmer 5 minutes. All the vegetables should be
cut into pieces of the same size so they cook at the same rate.
• The Chinese like icicle radish stir-fried with shellfish such as shrimp. Peel and
shred the radish. Stir-fry scallions first, then the radish, then the shrimp. The en-
tire cooking time shouldn't be over 6 or 8 minutes. Add a little soy sauce just
before serving and perhaps a tiny bit of sake (rice wine) or sherry.
• Stir-fry works very well with some diced pineapple and pork instead of shrimp.
• Grated radishes are also added to many Chinese sauces.
PICKLED . Asian radishes are widely used as pickles. Some recipes, like regular pickles,
take a long time to cure. But others can be made in a few hours simply by slicing the
radishes very thin and marinating in sugar, water, and rice vinegar. An entirely dif-
ferent taste is achieved by marinating in rice wine and soy sauce with a little sugar.
Pickled radishes are often used in cooking, where they impart their spicy flavor to the
whole dish in a very subtle way.
FOLIAGE . Perhaps you never knew that the foliage of radishes is edible. Young radish
tops make excellent greens, briefly steamed and served simply with a little butter.
SEEDS . Radish seeds are pleasantly peppery and great in a tossed salad.
Chinese Eggplant
G IE Z I , N GAI K WA
Solanum melongena
(color photo, page xiii)
The eggplant is a native of tropical Asia and is very popular in China. The cuisines
of the Middle East, Russia, and India also use eggplant in many interesting dishes, so
eggplant can take you on a culinary trip around the world. Also know as aubergine,
eggplant was long grown in Europe and England purely as an ornamental, which tells
you how pretty it is.