Do you have meals that linger in your mind months or years after you ate them? I can count just a small number of such meals, and experienced most of them at out-of-state restaurants (perhaps the long distances have added to my fond memories?).

One dish I savored at the time and still think about at least 10 years later is Scrambled Eggs with Garlic Chives and Shrimp. I had ordered it at a nondescript Chinese restaurant in a college town. What the restaurant lacked in decor and ambiance it made up for with its simple yet delicious food.

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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.

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