Savoy Cabbage with Dried Shrimp

As the new year started, I was thinking it had been quite some time since I tried out a new recipe from Every Grain of Rice, the first cookbook I've really cooked a lot from. That thought, combined with two packages of tofu that were expiring, led to trying out some new sets of recipes. One of those was stir-fried greens with dried shrimp (bao xin cai chao xia pi / 包心菜炒蝦皮), which I adapted by using Savoy cabbage (one of the options mentioned in the recipe sidebar) instead of the white bao xin cai cabbage, and served alongside ma po tofu.

Savoy cabbage is pretty but so time-consuming to clean

Our Savoy cabbage had light green leaves on the outside with yellow leaves inside. It looked nothing like the dark green cabbages I found (when researching after dinner) on these sites about Savoy cabbage. I'm no cabbage expert so I have no idea what that means for taste or quality. None of the other Savoy cabbages at Fairway looked any darker except for one that had a purple leaf, so I didn't think anything of it until I started learning more. I loved the intricate natural design of the cabbage but it made it very difficult and time-consuming to clean. I'm probably on the more particular side when it comes to getting the dirt out of vegetables so, if you can believe it, preparing this head of cabbage for the recipe (pulling off the leaves, meticulously cleaning each one and finally chopping) took an hour. Maybe it was just an excessively dirty head of cabbage.

Ingredients:

- 1 head of Savoy cabbage ($0.92) *
- 3 scallions, green parts only ($0.20)
- coconut oil for cooking ($0.20)
- 3/4 package of dried shrimp ($3.50)
- 2 tbsp light soy sauce ($0.10)
- salt ($0.02)

* The cabbage should have cost more (probably around $1.30) but they rang it up as green cabbage instead of Savoy cabbage. Didn't realize it until later, but at least the error was in our favor and not the reverse. I buy enough from them that I don't really feel that bad about it.

The ingredients for the recipe - other than the dried shrimp - were really inexpensive. The total came out around $5. I could probably use less shrimp if I made this again, in order to keep costs (and sodium) down.

Process:

This was a fairly straightforward recipe and quick to cook. What took forever was the preparation of the cabbage.

1. Prep work. Clean the cabbage leaves (discarding any fibrous outer leaves and thick stems) and then slice very thinly. [Apparently my definition of "very thinly" is different from theirs, since mine are much thinner than the recipe photo, something I realized after dinner.] Soak dried shrimp in hot water. Slice green onions into small pieces.

Look how much cabbage there was to prepare!

2. Add oil to wok on high flame and stir-fry shrimp until crisp and fragrant, and then set shrimp aside.

3. Add additional oil to wok and stir-fry greens on high until hot and a little crisp. Then add shrimp, soy sauce and salt to taste. 

4. Add the spring onions last, stir a few times, and serve.

Review:

This dish was pretty good, but A liked it more than I did. I found it a little salty from all the shrimp, soy sauce and salt (the recipe did note that you might not need much salt since the other ingredients are also salty), but A didn't think it was, so it's probably just a matter of taste. I'm not sure if I would make it again since I don't actually love dried shrimp that much and the cabbage was just so much work to prepare (combined with my slow speed, which I really need to improve on this year). Maybe I would try it with bok choy or sliced brussels sprouts instead of Savoy cabbage. I keep reading all these posts with people who love Savoy cabbage but it just didn't taste any different (or better) than regular cabbage to me (and still had that same funky cabbage smell when raw). The dish did come out fairly well. I think it's just a matter of personal preference for the types of vegetables and the salty taste.