Fresh bamboo shoots for hot weather

Taiwan spent fifty years under Japanese occupa­tion, from 1895 to 1945, and the culinary influence has never left. The fresh seafood available on the island is part of the reason why the Japanese cui­sine there is so wonderful, but I’m also fond of it because it has been inflected with Chinese flavors.

To make this local specialty, fat winter or spring bamboo shoots are cooked until barely tender, chilled, and then drizzled with ribbons of Japanese mayo. Overall, it’s a very simple dish, but make sure you check out the Tips below for help in selecting the main ingredient.

Beaooootiful

This last week I came across a gorgeous pile of black-sheathed bamboo shoots. They are spring rather than winter bamboo shoots because a) it is no longer winter and b) they are long and thin. I lack all self-control when it comes to ingredients like this, so I bought a large bag of them and happily mused over all of the good things that could be created with them.

And then the weather became really hot down here, and so it was a no-brainer: they had to be transformed into something dead simple, a lovely cold dish that I’ve loved for decades. Share the joy.

Cold bamboo shoots with mayonnaise

Liángbàn zhúsŭn 涼拌竹筍

Taiwan

Serves 4 to 6

1 pound | 500 g winter bamboo shoots, fresh or frozen and defrosted (see Tips)

2 teaspoons sea salt

Curly lettuce leaves for garnish, optional

Kewpie brand mayonnaise, as needed

Peel off the sheaths

1. Start this recipe at least 4 hours—and up to 3 days—before serving. If using fresh bamboo shoots, peel them. To do this, first cut off thin slices from the base with a very sharp knife until the meat is a pure ivory color. Then, slit the sheath up from one side, starting at the bottom and exerting more pressure as you reach the tip, which will aim your blade down through the sheath layers and make their removal relatively easy. Trim off any less-than-perfect bits. If you are using winter bamboo, cut the shoots into chunks about 1 inch | 2 cm all around. For spring bamboo, slice the shoots lengthwise into uniform strips, as having them the same size will help them cook evenly.

2. Rinse the shoots and place them in a medium saucepan. Cover with water and add the salt. Bring the water to a full boil over high heat and then reduce the heat to maintain a gentle simmer. Cook the shoots until the thickest piece can be easily pierced with a paring knife, about 15 min­utes for frozen winter shoots and about 30 minutes for fresh; spring bamboo shoots will sometimes take much longer, as the bases are particularly hard. (Remember, bamboo is used for things like furniture and flooring, so you’re sometimes faced with cooking young wood.) Drain, rinse with cool tap water, and drain again in a colander. Allow the shoots to cool to room temperature and then refrigerate for at least a couple of hours to chill them completely.

A split spring bamboo shoot

3. Just before serving, clean and dry the optional lettuce leaves and arrange them on a serving plate. Mound the chilled bamboo shoots on top of the lettuce and drizzle them with your mayonnaise.

Tips

When it comes to bamboo shoots, there are two basic kinds available in the United States at present: chūnsŭn 春筍 (“spring bamboo shoots”) and dōngsŭn 冬筍 (“winter bamboo shoots”). Spring bamboo shoots are long and thin, while winter bamboo shoots are short and chubby. Spring shoots are grassier and more delicate, and so should be cooked gently. Winter shoots are heavier in texture and great for braises.

Select fresh shoots that are firm all over; the sheaths should have no sign of mold or mildew. If the tips are not green, it means that the shoot was harvested while it was still underground and it’s likely that its sugars have not had a chance to turn bitter. Look for shoots that have freshly cut bases; shrinkage around the bases tells you that the shoots are drying out. Store these in the refrigerator in their sheaths and use as quickly as possible. Peel and blanch them if you need to keep them a while longer. Frozen ones keep well, but they should be used before they get freezer burn.

Ready to cook

Spring bamboo shoots will almost always be frozen during their shipment, which of course helps to keep them from rotting on their long ocean voyage, and so they are not really and truly fresh, but this is as close as we can get right now to the genuine article. What this means to you as a shopper is that you should gently (and most likely surreptitiously) squeeze the shoots as you pick them up. Discard any that feel at all mushy.

While you are doing that, inspect the bases and the tips. The tips should still be more or pointed, which means that they weren’t banged around a whole lot during their processing. The bases ought to look and feel hard. You will see a bit of drying out, which is normal, but press on the flat bottoms to see whether they have softened up, as this will indicate a hard freeze that broke down the cells. This generally can be trimmed off, but it is wasteful.

Accept no substitutes

Another way to prepare your bamboo shoots is to cook them in salted, defatted chicken stock. If you like, you can season the stock with rice wine, ginger, and green onions. The bamboo shoots will be much more flavorful this way, and they won’t need any garnish.

Hunt down Japanese Kewpie brand mayonnaise for this and all other Chinese dishes that call for mayo. It has a richer flavor with a tiny piquant edge smoothed with a bit of sugar. It is also packed with things like MSG, but oh well, it tastes really good.

If you would prefer more of a punch in your dish, mix the Kewpie with some Sriracha hot sauce to your favorite degree of hellishness and then toss the bamboo shoots with it. This goes really great with cold beer. Just saying.

Of bamboo shoots and coral rings

After getting off from work at the museum or library back in the early Eighties, I often would stroll over to Taipei’s downtown shopping area where endless shops lined the busy boulevards and narrow alleys. There I could easily spend many pleasant hours digging around for food treasures, something new to wear, or a great book, while other days I would just window shop.

One dusty place had me seriously intrigued: it was a jewelry store with the same lineup of old rings in the grimy windows every day, a mysterious array of trinkets that had never been moved, as could be seen by their healthy layer of dust and the delicate cobwebs that cemented them in place. There never was more than one light on inside, and compared to the glittering jewelry stores all around that catered to the bustling bridal business, this slovenly storefront definitely had little to recommend it.

Youmen chunsun

But one very old coral ring insistently called out to me from those dusty windows, and I’d look at it every time I passed by, then peer around to see if anyone was inside, and then stare at the ring some more. Finally, after turning my head practically upside-down, I could see the price tag peeking up from the tattered old display box. I did some serious bargaining calculations in my head, and figured how much it would finally go for. After hitting the post office where I stashed my cash (that is where Taiwan had the best and most convenient savings account system ever), I summoned up my nerve and banged on the door.

In the very back a light suddenly blasted out into the dark hallway. A puzzled older man shuffled his way to the front door, staring at me menacingly the whole time, opened it up a crack, and looked me up and down. “Whattayawant??” he growled in a rasping Shanghainese accent, cigarette smoke swirling around his ratty sweater like a leaden fog. “I’d like to try that coral ring on, please,” I said. “It’s not for sale,” he snarled as the door started to close.

“Wait!” I shouted. “What?” “This is a store, right?” “Hmph.” “And you have things in the window for sale, right?” He silently looked me up and down, then glared back in answer. “And now at long last you have a customer. Let’s try it on, shall we?” I put on my winningest smile and stuck a toe casually into the doorway.

Lovely spring bamboo shoots

He looked around me to see whether (I guessed) I had a gaggle of similarly annoying Americans in tow, and finding me reassuringly flying solo, he begrudgingly let me in, wrestled open the display case, and let me try on the ring, which wonder of wonders fit my fat fingers like a glove, a strange and wondrous sign in this land of the slender digits. 

“Now let’s discuss the price.” The reluctant shopkeeper rolled his eyes and made a halfhearted effort at bargaining, but clearly his main concern was finding a way to get this irritating foreigner out of his place toot sweet. He polished up the ring with a dirty rag, money and jewelry exchanged hands, and I strolled down the street, giddy at finally having my prize.

That jewelry shop never opened again and soon had a For Lease sign stuck in the grubby window. Friends told me that it probably had been a black market front, and I had been lucky to get out of there with so little trouble. Ah well, I thought, looking affectionately at the old gem on my right hand, sometimes you just never know where particularly good things may be hiding.

And that goes for food, too. The following famous dish from the bamboo-laced mountains of Zhejiang has the Chinese name of “spring bamboo shoots braised in oil.” The problem is that cooks invariably take that a bit too literally and turn out things that are drowning in the stuff. 

Actually, the oil should be there merely to help along the cooking process and provide a bit of luxurious mouthfeel against the stark cleanliness of the bamboo. The dish should not be seasoned with a heavy hand, either, as is usually done, because that would overwhelm the delicacy of the stems’ grassy flavor. For that reason I also season these lightly, with only the minimum of soy sauce, rice wine, and sugar to stimulate the taste buds.

You can serve this dish hot or cold or at any point in-between. I prefer just slightly warmer than room temperature, as this allows the oil to melt a bit and slide off the thin needles, and it also will make the oil subside into the background rather than coat the tongue like a glove. This is a great make-ahead dish that can be ready for guests or a simple contemplative meal by yourself as you congratulate yourself on your best purchases ever.

Oil braised spring bamboo shoots

Yóumèn chūnsŭn  油燜春筍

Zhejiang
Serves 4

Shoots torn in half

14 to 16 ounces peeled and prepped spring (long, narrow) bamboo shoots, either fresh or frozen and defrosted (never use canned!)

1 cup filtered water

2 tablespoons Green Onion Mingyou, or fresh peanut or vegetable oil

1 teaspoon toasted sesame oil

2 tablespoons Shaoxing rice wine

2½ tablespoons regular soy sauce

1½ tablespoons sugar

1. Start this a day before you plan to serve it. If you are using fresh bamboo shoots, place them in a saucepan, cover with water, and bring the water to a boil. Reduce the heat to a simmer and cook them until the bases of the shoots are tender. (If there are lots of different sizes of bamboo shoots in there, fish out the little ones as they are done so that they are not cooked to death.). Rinse the shoots in cool tap water, and drain in a colander. Frozen bamboo shoots have already been cooked, so all you need to do is defrost them thoroughly and rinse.

2. Now shred the bamboo shoots into thinnish strips by notching the stem end with a paring knife (go down about a ½-inch or so if the stems are a bit hefty), and then pull the bamboo shoot apart. Try to get them all into more or less the same size strips, which should be around ½-inch wide. I like to leave the strips long because they are so pretty (the interiors look like ladders, so this could be called shoots and ladders, I suppose), but cut them crosswise in half, if you wish.

3. Place the bamboo shoots, water, oils, rice wine, and soy sauce (but not the sugar) in a saucepan, cover, bring to a boil, and then lower the heat to a simmer. Cook the shoots covered for about 30 minutes, or until they are completely tender at the thickest bases. Add the sugar, toss again, and cook over high heat uncovered until almost all of the sauce has evaporated. Toss the shoots in the thickened sauce and plate. Cool, cover, refrigerate overnight, and serve the next day either warm, cool, or hot (see headnote).

Spring bamboo teaser from Anhui

In one of my previous lives I must have been a panda. That is the only explanation I can think of for my undying love for any- and everything made with bamboo shoots. And the more I look into Anhui's cuisine, the more I find to like, because bamboo shoots spring up everywhere just like, well, bamboo shoots.

The misty reaches of southern Anhui province are home to some pretty spectacular bamboo forests, and the long, thin "spring" type of bamboo (as opposed to the thicker and squatter "winter" bamboo shoots we've discussed earlier) of Mount Wenzheng are commonly held to be some of the best around, as they are tender, juicy, flavorful, and crunchy. 

There fame was secured long ago in the Anhui tongzhi (Anhui gazeteer), which said, "Bamboo shoots are produced in Liuyi, Anhui, and the flavor of the Wenzheng ones are the finest." And during the Southern Song dynasty (1127-1279), bamboo shoots were held in such high esteem that they were sent as tribute to the imperial palace. Lots of baggage for these little guys to handle.

Frozen "spring" bamboo shoots

But handle it they do, and with considerable aplomb. As of this date, though, echt bamboo shoots from Mount Wenzheng are not yet available anywhere near where I live, so I've resorted to some frozen spring bamboo shoots that are really quite good. These are available year round, and this cool appetizer is done with a minimum of effort, so when hot weather hits your area, consider making this refreshing dish to start your next meal.

Light colored vinegar is the traditional sour note in this dish, but I've come to like fresh lemon juice here instead for its spectacular burst of liveliness and scent. (And that's not just a California thing... lemons did, of course, originally come from China, so I'm just returning the favor.) Only a minimum of sugar is added to balance out the lemon's tartness and a touch of salt to wake up the palate. 

Also, I sprinkle Toasted Sesame Seeds on top in addition to a few drops of roasted sesame oil to add another level of flavor and texture. I've included a recipe below for these sesame seeds, which bumps up the flavor and texture a couple of more notches.

Pandas shouldn't have all the fun.

Tender shoots being toweled off

Mt. Wenzheng style bamboo shoots 
Wenzhengshan sun 問政山筍 
Anhui

Serves 6 to 8 as an appetizer

1 pound frozen spring bamboo
Filtered water as needed
1 tablespoon sea salt
4 tablespoons fresh lemon juice, or a light colored, tasty vinegar
1½ tablespoons sugar, or to taste
½ teaspoon sea salt
Roasted sesame oil
1 tablespoon (or more) Toasted Sesame Seeds (recipe below)
Garnish, optional

Whack the shoots to open them up

1. Place the bamboo shoots in a medium saucepan and cover them with water; add the tablespoon of sea salt and bring the pot to a boil. Lower the heat to medium-high and simmer the shoots until the thickest parts are tender. The easiest way to do this is to pierce an end with a paring knife; it should go in easily. Do remember, though, that frozen vegetables have all been blanched to some degree, so also be careful to not overcook the shoots and turn the tips into mush.

2. Drain the bamboo shoots and immediately rinse in cool water so that they stop cooking. Drain and pat dry with a kitchen towel.

3. Cut the shoots into 2- to 3-inch lengths. Slice the tip ends into thin strips. Hit the thicker ends with the side of your cleaver to help tenderize them some more, and then cut them into very thin strips. 

4. Place the bamboo in a medium work bowl. Add the lemon juice, sugar, and half teaspoon sea salt, and toss the bamboo in the seasonings. Let the bamboo shoots then sit there for a few minutes to give the sugar and salt the chance to dissolve; if you taste them right away, they will taste sweeter and saltier than they will later on because both ingredients are still crystalline. Once these crystals have melted away, do a taste test and add more lemon juice, sugar, or salt as needed. Refrigerate covered so the bamboo shoots get a chance to chill and absorb the seasonings.

5. Just before serving, pile up the bamboo shoots on a pretty plate, drizzle some sesame oil over them, and then sprinkle with the Roasted Sesame Seeds. Decorate with a few sprigs of cilantro or some little bamboo leaves, if you have them.

It doesn't get easier than this

Toasted sesame seeds 
Ganchao zhima  乾炒芝麻 
All over China
Makes ½ cup
½ cup raw sesame seeds (any kind)

1. This is one of those recipes that are super easy, but it's also one of those rare ones where lots of senses are involved: eyes, nose, and even the ears.

2. First check the sesame for tiny rocks or foreign matter. Heat a small dry frying pan over medium-high heat until the edge of the pan feels hot to the touch. Do not add any oil.

Stir the sesame

Add the sesame seeds to the dry pan and lower the heat to medium. Stir the sesame very often with a flat spatula while they toast, and as the seeds heat up and start to crackle, be sure to stir them constantly. 

3. The seeds will begin to pop and smell delicious as they turn a golden brown, and as soon as they are gold all over, pour the seeds into a shallow bowl to cool off. (If you leave them in the pan, they will continue to cook and probably burn.)

4. Store the toasted sesame in a jar in a cool, dry place. Try to use them up in a week or two so that they don't lose that freshly toasted flavor.