A signature Shanghainese flavor made at home

One of the classic flavors of the lower Yangtze River area is fresh salted mustard greens. 

Often available in Chinese supermarkets nowadays, you will find it either in refrigerated plastic bags or canned. However, you can make this at home with minimal effort, ensuring that it truly is fresh and tasty.

           

I have always loved the subtle spicy hint in these greens that is courtesy of their mustardy volatile oils. 

This characteristic is most obvious when you take a nibble of the fresh darker leaves, and it becomes mellower as the vegetable is cooked, as can be enjoyed in a Hunanese recipe for mustard stems cooked with schmaltz and ginger (jīyóu jiècài  雞油芥菜).

Baby radish (L) & xuelihong greens

With salting, though, this nose-tickling tendency gets tamped down even more, providing a really delicious hit of flavor that turns almost buttery when it is chopped and fried. In next week’s post, I will show you how to use it in a classic dish from the coastal town of Ningbo in Zhejiang province: sliced rice cakes with bamboo shoots and fresh soybeans, with the xuelihong adding just the right amount of salt and seasoning. (Fun fact: I could go through bowls of that without breaking a sweat.)

           

Summer and autumn are the times when true xuelihong mustard greens appear in Chinese markets, their long stems and wrinkled leaves offering the perfect counterpoint of crunchiness and softness when they are salted. Just about any variety of mustard will do, though, and I have even made it from Chinese radish greens numerous times when I could not find any mustard that grabbed my fancy. (Korean markets are excellent sources for the baby radish greens as pictured above on the left.)

           

Wilted greens

The only caveat is that all of these greens—and especially radish greens—can be terribly gritty, and just a single microscopic grain will ruin your enjoyment of these sensuously salted greens, so wash and wash and wash them until every speck is gone. I usually soak the fresh greens in a big basin of warm water, which softens the dirt and makes it easy to dislodge. Soak the greens at least three times this way (use the water on your plants if you don’t like wasting it), swishing the greens around vigorously after their soak. When the water at the bottom of the basin is absolutely grit free, then you can proceed.

           

Salting them is an easy affair. Shake the greens dry and then either towel-dry them or whirl them in a salad spinner to remove the surface water. Then, place them in a large, clean bowl and massage them with the salt. That is pretty much it. Use the salted greens within a week for optimum flavor and texture.

Salted Shanghainese greens

Xuělĭhóng 雪裏紅 or xuělĭhóng 雪裏蕻

Jiangsu, Zhejiang
Makes about 2 cups chopped greens

2 pounds (more or less) xuelihong mustard greens, other mustard greens, or fresh Chinese radish greens

2 tablespoons coarse sea salt

1. Rinse the greens thoroughly and shake dry. Tear the greens in half or thirds and dry them either in a salad spinner or wrapping in a dry tea towel. Cut the thick stems in half.

Spin off the water

2. Place the greens in a large work bowl and sprinkle them with the salt. Then, lightly rub the salt into the greens for a few minutes. Let the greens sit in the bowl, tossing them every 5 minutes or so, for about 20 minutes, and then let them rest in the bowl for another 40 minutes until the leaves and stems are limp.

3. Use your hands to squeeze out the liquid from the greens, handfuls at a time, and place the greens in a resealable plastic bag. Close the bag and refrigerate the greens for a day or two. Chop the leaves and stems into approximately ¼-inch pieces. Return the greens to the bag and keep them refrigerated, and use them within a week. Rinse the greens under cool tap water and squeeze dry before using.

Stir-fried Ningbo rice cakes

Many years ago, I lived by myself in an apartment near the Taipei municipal airport. I really enjoyed being by myself for the first time in a foreign country, and heartily recommend this sort of freedom as something that should be experienced. 

Not having any roommates or a Chinese family to contend with meant that I could eat whatever I wanted whenever I wanted, and in Taiwan this was nirvana, for something tasty was always was no more than five minutes away. I was never at a loss for dinner because tiny one-man and one-woman shops were set up all over the neighborhood. 

Around the corner from my building, for example, was a little place where I first became acquainted with the unique cuisine of Ningbo, a Zhejiang town just south of Shanghai that is famous for its unique take on eastern Chinese cuisine. The chef was also the cashier and dishwasher and waiter and busboy at this hole-in-the-wall, but Mr. Liu did it all with such grace and aplomb that I could swear he had clones.

Almost everything had rice in it, with a couple of appetizers and fish entrees to round out the menu. The chef offered crabs in season, beautiful shrimp that were always sweet and fresh, and a selection of whatever fish looked good that day.

Sliced rice cakes

And that makes sense, because Ningbo is renowned for its seafood. To me, though, the one ingredient that always makes me think of Mr. Liu and that symbolizes this gentle cuisine in my mind is its sliced rice cakes. 

The English name "rice cakes" really doesn't do justice to what the Chinese call niangaopian. Ground rice is mixed with water and steamed into logs with a consistency just a bit harder than that of Japanese mochi. But then the good folks of Ningbo take this one step further by slicing the logs on the diagonal into thin tiles that can be tossed into soup or, my favorite, stir-fried into a savory pile of gently chewy goodness.

There is a secret to stir-frying rice cakes, one that eluded me for years until someone set me straight. In the past, I had simply fried whatever else was going in the pot - meat, ginger, green onions, mushrooms - and then added the rice cakes and a whole lot of moisture in the form of soy sauce, wine, stock, and water. The results were delicious but a bit mushy, for my rice cakes never had that elusive "Q" quality, that slight bit of tooth-resistance that restaurant versions always have.

And then I found out that I should have soaked the rice cakes to plump them up first.

Looking back, this seems pretty obvious, but that is hindsight speaking. Now, when I want to serve stir-fried rice cakes, all I have to do is plan ahead by a couple of hours, and then they have the perfect texture. In China, stir-fried rice cakes are usually eaten as a snack, but you can serve them as the starch component of any meal or even by themselves if you add enough veggies. They are delicious for breakfast or a late night snack, by the way, if you use bacon and eggs instead of pork and salted mustard greens. But I digress.

Rice cakes (L) and salted mustard greens

Today's version also includes an East China element that goes perfectly with pork: xuelihong, a type of salted mustard. This is often written incorrectly in Chinese as 雪裡紅, literally "red-in-snow," but if you want to show off your smarts, remember that its true name is 雪裡蕻, the last character pronounced the same as 紅 here and meaning "exuberant." (This is another one of those cases where I haven't a clue as to where the name came from.) If you want to avoid the conflict altogether, you could just simply call it by its other name, 雪菜 xuecai, or "snow vegetable."

I've used a piece of smoked pork loin in this recipe, which plays off nicely against the sourness of the salted mustard and the bite of the ginger; however, use whatever meat you like or have handy. Simple shredded pork is the traditional meat, but chicken, turkey, and just about everything else can be used. Sliced mushrooms are a good meatless alternative; they add a delicious earthiness to the dish and make it feel even more appropriate for this cold autumn weather. 

Neither sliced rice cakes nor salted mustard greens keep very well once their packaging is opened, so plan on using them up within a week; both are available vacuum-packed, and they will stay fresh a very long time if they are not opened.

A local Zhejiang specialty

Rice cakes stir-fried with pork and snow vegetable - Xuecai rousi chao niangao 雪菜肉絲炒年糕 
Shanghai, Jiangsu

Serves 2 as a snack, 4 as a side dish

12 ounces (2½ cups) sliced rice cakes (niangaopian; see note above)
Filtered water
6 to 8 ounces smoked pork loin, fresh pork, or other meat (or a large handful of Chinese black mushrooms)
6 ounces (½ cup) salted mustard greens (xuelihong; see note above)
4 to 5 tablespoons peanut or vegetable oil
2 tablespoons finely shredded fresh ginger
3 green onions, trimmed and chopped
2 tablespoons Shaoxing rice wine
3 or 4 tablespoons filtered water
Sea salt and freshly-ground pepper to taste

1. Start this recipe at least 2½ hours before you want to serve it. Cover the sliced rice cakes in cool filtered water for 2 to 4 hours to plump them up. (Do not use warm or hot water, as this will make the rice cakes mushy.) 

Dry on left, plumped on right

2. Drain the rice cakes thoroughly. Slice the meat against the grain and into either long shreds (the traditional way) or thin tiles. If you are using mushrooms, remove the stems and slice the caps into thin pieces. Rinse the salted mustard greens under running water in a sieve or colander. Squeeze the salted mustard greens dry and taste a piece; they should be slightly salty and have absolutely no sand or grit. If they are not already finely chopped, do so now.

3. Heat the oil in a wok on high until the oil begins to shimmer. Add the ginger and mushrooms to the wok and stir-fry them for a few seconds to release their fragrance, and then add the meat or mushrooms. Stir-fry these until they are almost done. Toss in the salted mustard greens and stir them around quickly to heat them through.

4. Add the rice cakes, rice wine, and water to wok, and quickly stir-fry them with the rest of the ingredients so that the rice cakes become very hot; they are already cooked, so this is just a matter of heating them well. Some of the rice cakes will stick to the bottom of the wok, but that is all right; just scrape them off as well as you can with your spatula. Taste and add salt as needed, as well as some ground pepper. Serve immediately. (The wok will probably need to soak for a while, so let it do that while you enjoy this Ningbo speciality!)