Pea Shoots
When I dine at restaurants, I like to order things I can’t cook myself. And since I don’t know how to cook many things, I usually have a lot of menu options. An exception to this little rule of mine at Asian restaurants is vegetables. I rarely order stand-alone vegetable dishes because Asian greens are one of the handful of things I can cook relatively and consistently well.
But I have an exception to this exception. (I never said I was normal, did I?)
Pea shoots. When properly cooked, this vegetable is tender, naturally sweet, and delicately pea flavored. I usually eat pea shoots sautéed with garlic at Chinese or Vietnamese restaurants. It’s delicious, one of my favorite vegetables.
But I’ve also eaten pea shoots that were tough and stringy…at my own hands.
I don’t know what went wrong that one time I cooked it. I used my tried-and-true method for Asian greens—sautéeing with a little oil and salt. Only this time my method wasn’t true, and I ended up with a pile of fibrous leaves and stems. So I’ve been ordering it at restaurants since, and paying the price, literally. One bunch of pea shoots can be had for less than two dollars, yet a dish can cost around $12. I know. So I’m thinking I need to try cooking it again. It’s actually a versatile vegetable.
Curly tendrils.
More curly tendrils. Just think of them as vegetable art, okay?
It may be that restaurants only take the young shoots; my dad brought home cases and cases of pea shoots discarded by his restaurant once and even then my mom and I had to sort out and snap off the young parts. Sadly those make up a very small percentage of the bunch you get, so I just suck it up and eat the tough bits too.
Dhereztrez: I had wondered if perhaps the ones I cooked were older, and thus more stringy. Poor you for having to do such tedious work!
Oh, it’s not much of a hassle. Just that you gotta pick out the leaves that haven’t opened yet, and there’s very little! It’s worth the deliciousness, so long as you have a source for cartons of shoots
help! which leaves do you take out? we bought a bag of this from the 99 Ranch (chinese market) but we have no idea which leaves to separate and cook.
Alex: Dhereztrez said to pick out the leaves that haven’t yet opened (and cook those). You may find this brief post about cooking pea shoots helpful. And this site is devoted entirely to pea shoots.
I finally had a chance to try pea shoots in a restaurant…and now I see why my dad ended up with so much. They barely use any of it at all! Only the youngest shoots…