Week two of my sister’s attempt to keep me alive so she can torture me in my old age by insisting I name every person I have ever met. Once again she set a supermarket challenge, one I feel I failed and yet surprisingly accomplished at the same time.
This dish required something called bok choy, an item I am certain celebrity vegans feed to their cats while making TikTok videos about how healthy their pets eat.
Finding this delicacy was a more tricky endeavour. My first attempt ended in utter failure and nearly earned me 3-6 months of hard labour. A first, I targeted a little old lady who was admiring cabbages and such. “Excuse me”, says I …. nothing. Fine, I’ll hold on as she appeared grossly engaged with her selection process … “Hi, can you help me please”, still nothing. Now I am starting to worry as I have been staring at this old lady for nearly a minute and was pretty sure security was getting twitchy.
“HELLO,” I say a bit louder, she showed even less interest this time which put me in panic mode, either she is deaf and this is going to go badly, or she is a figment of my imagination and this is going to go really badly. That is when I spot her, my saviour, the younger version of the deaf lass, turning into the vegetable isle. She had carrots, fresh peppers and mushrooms in her trolley but no pineapple. So I abandoned all hope of engaging my older friend and started pursuing her young self, who I hope has better hearing. Not wanting to make this easy she inadvertently turns down a side aisle and appears to speed up as she heads off to the special items section of the store.
So now here I was harassing the old troll, only to find myself chasing her younger version through the store. In the back of my head, I hear sirens wailing. Eventually, I corner her. “Hi, do you know what bok choy is and where do I find it”. Sure she says in the most awesome Welsh accent, do I go for a name and number routine or stay on track? “You can get it at Sainsburys,” … my heart collapsed, I’m not travelling to save my life, no matter what my sister wants. “What would be an alternative?”, I ask as I hold out a pack of leeks in forlorn hope they are a suitable alternative, after all they look the same. “Noo, ” she laughts, leeks are like onions, you want a cabbage or Chinese cabbage. I thank her and move back to my foraagging grounds, my options are white cabbage or white sweetheart cabbage, for 6p cheaper. So I go for the better-sounding one.
Then there is the canola oil, canola is not even a thing. This is basically low-acid oil (ola) from Canada (can), more commonly known as rapeseed oil in less pretentious parts of the world. I used google on this one, other search engine options are available.
The dish calls for kosher salt and pepper. My supermarket has Cornish, Schwarts, Maldon, Maldon Garlic, Maldon chilli, Dorset salt and salt from Saxa. Use whichever you fancy, I just used the stuff I had at home.
Ingredients
- 3 tablespoons canola oil
- 3 garlic cloves
- 2 tablespoons minced fresh ginger
- 1 pound baby bok choy, halved lengthwise
- Kosher salt and black pepper
- 1/4 cup oyster sauce
- 1 tablespoon low-sodium soy sauce
- 1.5 pounds boneless skinless cod fillets, cut crosswise into 2-inch pieces
- 1 tablespoon unsalted butter
- 1 tablespoon lime juice
- Cooked rice, soba or egg noodles
Preparation
Step 0
The recipe says nothing about how to prepare rice or egg noodles, one takes 20 minutes and the other 5. I am sure you can work this into your planning. I added two cups of rice to 3.5 cups of water in my new microwave bowl, so I guess I’m now the Man with a pan and a bowl. To flavour the rice add 1 stock cube. I added a vegetable stock cube. Feel free to add two I’ts probably fine. Don’t quote me.
Step 1
In a large non-stick skillet otherwise known as a wok
- Heat 2 teaspoons oil
- Add garlic and ginger; cook for one minute until the air starts to smell like your fingers. Professionals call this Sauté
- Add bok choy
- Salt and pepper – guess the quantity as the recipe does not specify.
- Cook for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. – 5 minutes means until the bok choy is soft, it could be 3 or 8 depending on how hot your hob is.
Transfer contents to a plate, you may want to cover it to keep warm
Step 2
If you are smarter than me, you will have a pan and a wok and run these steps at the same time. This will result in your bok choy being warm and ready to serve with the fish.
- Add oyster sauce & 1 tablespoon canola oil to a skillet (pan) and bring to a simmer over a medium heat.
- Season fish lightly with salt and pepper and add to the skillet
- Let this simmer on medium to low heat for 5 minutes.
- Turn fish and simmer, spooning sauce over fish until cooked through, another 5 minutes or so.
- Swirl in butter and lime juice and let simmer until sauce thickens, another 2 minutes
Step 3
Serve fish and bok choy over rice or noodles. Drizzle with remaining sauce.
Cooking adjustments
I used cabbage, 80g/one head of it was enough to serve 4. I have no idea how many people you can serve with 1.5 pounds of bok choy.
To my Jewish friends please forgive me for using normal salt and pepper, it’s what I had. To my sister’s Jewish friends, you have been duped, I know for a fact she does not have kosher salt and pepper. I clearly remember her collecting salt straight from the sea in little bottles as a kid which I am almost sure she still does to this day.
As it turns out the juice of one leftover lemon is a tad more than one tablespoon and it certainly takes longer to get the sauce to thicken once added. No worry, I just had a lemmier (that will be added to the Oxford dictionary once you guys use it 19,999 more times) flavoured cod and more sauce to drizzle over the rice.
I unashamedly used utterly butterly as my butter of choice, I have no idea if it was unsalted and suspect that the minute amount of salt it may have in it pales in comparison to the liberated amounts I added to the cabbage and fish. If you are worried about your salt intake, reduce the quantity of salt you add to the dish.
Lime or lemon, both fall from a tree, are green and sour. I just so happened to have a rindless lemon in the fridge, a leftover from the famous Tortilla Soup recipe.
Having not read the recipe correctly I just had 6 chunks of code smothered in sauce, with skin on. Does this make a difference, I think not. However …. the fish seems to fall apart so treat it like you would an ice cream in the desert.
I am pretty sure any white fish would do. You could even use sole, which is very tasty with tartar sauce, so much so I am convinced that the fish is solely used as a mechanism to ingest sauce and could easily be replaced by celery which would be a win for vegans everywhere.
Outcome
I think preparation is key, cooking would be much smoother if I had the fish pre-salted and peppered, the lemon squeezed and the herbs pre-crushed and skinned. In the end, it worked out just fine however I can see the day I burn the rice, overcook the fish and forget to add the oil. Till then bon appetit.
This dish rates as yummy, there is something to be said about cooking with fresh ingredients. Fresh ginger smells wonderful and at one point I nearly bit a finger off.
The oyster sauce is sweet and salty with a tangy taste – hope that helps and was well worth the £1.80 spent on it.
The legal bit
The image in no way reflects the dish described above, the only similarity is that it has cod in it and was borrowed from greedygourmet.com who has a great Parmesan Baked Cod you may want to try.
I have no evidence that my sister still collects salt from the sea, and even less that she serves it to her friends, in-laws and family. This is just a gut feeling based on how often she likes to send pictures of the ocean. – Let’s see what her lawyers make of that.
Nothing in this recipe should be considered health advice, if you have high or low blood pressure, or an aversion to fish, salt or green foods remember you made it and put it in your mouth. The consequences and pleasures are on you.