Chinese Cooking: Unknown Greens!

I never cooked at home in Chicago. I loved my apartment, but a kitchen needs to be clean. There was an element of carelessness that I am both guilty and intolerant of that can slowly creep into a kitchen that is shared by many different people making different types of things. Not only clean, but a kitchen needs to be conducive to cooking.  While having a big kitchen can be great, having a poorly laid out kitchen is not inviting to people who have no idea how to cook. A large open linoleum-floored room with refridgerator 12 feet away from the 2 feet of counter space, and cupboards too high for me to reach is an intimidatingly inappropriate place to cook.

Squishing some garlic to open it up

peeling garlic

slicing garlic

 My kitchen is Beijing is smaller, probably more than have the size of my kitchen in Chicago. The counter space is double, things are easy to reach, and my roommates are clean. We all cook for ourselves and we all clean up after ourselves. I don't know if I've ever cooked this much for myself. Despite the kitchen differences, I am very fond of the small produce markets in China. I much prefer buying a small amount of food at one time. Though it requires going out more often, the vegetables are fresh, and I end up cooking more often, too. A five minute walk to buy vegetables and fruits at a small market is so much easier for me than a five minute bike ride to a Dominick's or Jewel in the States.

knife action shot!

slicing red pepper

garlic and red pepper ready for the pan

 While I am a vegetarian, vegetarianism is not popular or common in China. I have become relatively less a vegetarian when I eat out (though I only order vegetable dishes, I'm positive some of the sauces are made with animal products), so I tend to want to cook more at home. The benefit of cooking at home is that I can know exactly what I'm eating... but, really, I don't!

I can spend about 21RMB (less than $4.00) on a bag of veggies per week. I have mostly been making stir-fry's with many different types of greens, a few peppers, chili sauces, and sesame paste. Sometimes I'll put it all over rice or with rice noodles. Even though I seriously have no idea what I'm doing, everything usually tastes good.

The next few images are of things I put into a stir-fry and need help identifying:

A nice big green pepper, not very spicy at all

sliced into ovals at an angle

Identify these leaves:

I then diced that unknown green pepper up and I also sliced and diced up a regular green pepper.

I'm pretty sure the picture above is cilantro. It smells amazing and adds a lot of flavor to the dishes I've been making.

Is the image below of spinach? I had never bought food from a farmer's market in the states, so seeing vegetables without labels is new to me. Spinach, right?

I used that big knife for all of the cutting. The knife has great weight to it and feels satisfying to cut with.

What is this amazing leafy green? As you can see I have no idea how to cut these greens up either. I basically just cut into 1-2 inch sections, including stems, and put it into a pile on the cutting board.

I usually start with some sesame oil and sauteed the vegetables.

sesame oil

 

 

sauteeing red pepper, garlic, and 2 different types of green pepper

Then I add sesame paste, some water to thin the paste, chili garlic sauce,  and slowly toss in the greens.

I then put the mixture over some rice noodles.

I don't know if this looks good to anyone else, but it looks pretty to me... and it tastes really good. I'd love to know what I'm eating!