Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Tatsoi with jasmine rice and eggs

This is the 2nd week of our winter CSA and still no squash. There's still plenty of pumpkin in the freezer, but that requires more preparation (i.e. thawing the pumpkin). So tonight starts a new segment called Squash-Free Cooking.

I was going to cook an egg tonight with some kale (from today's CSA) and maybe a corn tortilla spread with goat cheese and hot pepper jelly. But R. reminded me of the tatsoi from last week. There's a reason it was still here -- neither of us was quite sure what it was. This is one of the joys and challenges of having a CSA.

We switched CSA locations to one slightly more convenient and I think we lucked out in the special ingredient category because we got maple syrup again! This will be luck if we skip a sorghum week (the other items are honey and mushrooms). Or maybe everyone gets two weeks of maple syrup in a row.

I skipped an Internet search and went straight to the cookbooks for a recipe. But only one of the cookbooks I checked had anything with it. Nothing in The Joy of Cooking. Nothing in Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything. Nothing in the Moosewood Cookbook. Only Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone had anything and that was the Tender Tatsoi with Sesame Oil Vinaigrette. A salad. Except it is currently 30 degrees outside and I wanted warmth.

So I made up the following on the spot based on what I found in the pantry and what Deborah Madison's cookbook called for:

Ingredients: jasmine rice, tatsoi, olive oil, rice vinegar, sesame oil, black sesame seeds, and oyster sauce.
Cook time: maybe 30 minutes.

Cooking process:
I wasn't sure if I should just eat the greens or the stems as well so I split the difference and included part, but not all, of the stem. I sauteed the tatsoi in olive oil for about 10-15 minutes at medium heat and then added a splash of rice vinegar and a splash of sesame oil. The book called for toasted sesame seeds, which we didn't have. R. said there were black sesame seeds in the spillover spice area (on the very top of the kitchen cabinets). I couldn't reach the container even with a chair unless I climbed on the counter, which I was not prepared to do. Turns out there were also black sesame seeds in the spice rack, so I added a pinch of those.

Meanwhile, I cooked the jasmine rice according to the package instructions. I didn't feel like dirtying another pan so for the egg, I pushed the tatsoi to the side, turned the heat down slightly and cooked the egg on the other half of the skillet. I cooked it "sunny side down," which is a new thing for me. The yolk was still a little runny -- that's my favorite part when it spills over the food.

I scooped some rice into my bowl, added a little bit of oyster sauce (I bought this for an earlier Asian cabbage recipe and haven't used it since), topped it with the tatsoi and then slid the egg on the very top. Had it with a glass of Shiraz.

There is leftover rice and tatsoi for one of us to have tomorrow. Egg sold separately.
washed tatsoi in my favorite colander

Bag of jasmine rice

The extra spices live on the top of the cabinet I can't reach

Vinegars, sauce, and spice

Simmering rice


[No picture of the tatsoi cooking, sorry]

The finished plate with the runny yolk

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