Stir-fry Royale Chives (Qing Long Cai)
Stir-fry royale chives (清炒青龙菜) is a recent discovery of mine, after eating the vegetable at a restaurant for the first time months ago. Since then, I have been cooking several versions of this vegetable weekly. This basic stir-fry, with lots of garlic & ginger, is a simple yet homely version, enabling one to enjoy the inherent mildly sweet taste of the chives.
Variations:
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In my earlier attempts at cooking this veg, I notice that the royale chives exudes some liquid after cooking. Adding too much water and/or overcooking may result in the chives looking soggy & mushy. So I prefer to do a drier stir-fry for this veg, adding little or no water except for Chinese wine. A hot wok with a quick cooking time helps, too, to keep the chives tender and green after cooking.
Royale chives are known literally as “green dragon chives” (qing long cai/青龙菜) or Chinese garlic chives. Being “royal”, this vegetable is slightly more expensive than other types of Asian greens at about S$2+ per bundle, but it is still so much more affordable when home-cooked.
As a lazy cook, a top reason why I love this vegetable is due to the ease of preparation. There are no stems or roots. Simply use the entire leaf & cut it to equal sections. I usually cut them to four (pictured above) or five equal sections.
The flip side though is that there is quite a bit of dirt on the chives, and you have to rinse & wash them thoroughly before use. I also spin dry them in a salad spinner to reduce the splattering in the wok.
Stir-fry Royale Chives (Qing Long Cai) Recipe
There is quite a bit of dirt in these royale chives, so be sure to rinse them thoroughly to get rid of all the soil before cooking.
Ingredients:
- 1 packet (150g) royale chives (青龙菜)
- 1 tbsp oil
- 5 cloves garlic finely chopped
- 4 thin slices ginger sliced to long thin strips
- 3/4 tsp mushroom seasoning powder see cooking note below
- tiny pinch of salt to taste
- 1 tbsp Chinese wine (Hua Tiao/Shaoxing)
Directions:
- Prepare royale chives by cutting them to four uniform sections. Wash the chives thoroughly to get rid of the excess dirt and spin dry.
- Cook aromatics. Heat oil in a wokpan. Add garlic & ginger, cooked briskly until aromatic.
- Add prepared chives and mushroom powder. Stir fry on high heat until half withered. Then drizzle Chinese wine along the walls of the wokpan. Continue stir-frying until the chives are just cooked and still green.
Cooking Note(s):
I use mushroom seasoning powder as a delicious MSG-free seasoning for all my vegetable stir-fries. You can substitute it with appropriate amount of salt, soy sauce or fish sauce.