Picked up a chinese cabbage at the market last week, also known as napa cabbage. Though I'm sure I've eaten some at some point in my life, I don't believe we've cooked with them before. This one was huge so we needed two meals to use it all. First we made a lentil coconut curry. The chinese cabbage absolutely MADE this dish. The stem part ended up with the flavor and texture of celery, adding a nice crunch. The leafy part was sort of like spinach. Delicious!
Tonight we are making crunchy cabbage salad - a favorite dish of my spouse's family, but I believe they use regular cabbage. Napa/chinese cabbage is really more similar in flavor and appearance to bok choy, in my opinion. Anyway, the basic recipe is to make a dressing on the stovetop with vinegar, oil, soy sauce and sugar. Toss dressing with chopped cabbage, crunchy noodles, and sesame seeds. I'll also be including almonds, and I have some canned oranges on hand that I might throw in. People often include green onions, but those aren't in season now so I just leave them out.
EDIT: The crunchy cabbage salad was decent, but in the future I would make the dressing and mix it with the chopped chinese cabbage the night before - then add almonds and crunchy noodles right before eating. It was pretty sweet so we didn't include oranges, though I still believe they would be a tasty addition. I would probably reduce the amount of sugar if I made it again. Finally, we ate this as a main dish and it really would be much, much better as a side.
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