Cantonese · Side
Baak Cheuk Gai Lan (Blanched Gai Lan with Ginger Oil)
- Easy
- 12 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
- Vegan
Leads with aromatics blooming from the first bite, savory depth stacked from the pantry’s bass notes, ending saline and clean.
Ingredients
- 500 g gai lan
- 3 litres water
- 10 g fine salt
- 10 g caster sugar
- 30 ml groundnut oil, for the blanching water
- 25 g ginger, finely shredded
- 45 ml groundnut oil, for the finish
- 30 ml light soy sauce
- 15 ml water, for the sauce
- 5 g caster sugar, for the sauce
- 2 spring onions, shredded
The skills inside
Draining fried food: a rack, never paperSteaming: basket, leaf and lidSalted water & the float testBlanching & shocking
The words inside
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · peanuts · soy
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Split any stem thicker than a pencil down its length so stem and leaf finish together, and trim the dry base.
- Bring the water to a hard rolling boil with the salt, sugar and 30 ml oil: it has to stay boiling when the greens go in, so work in two batches if the pan is small.
- Blanch 90 seconds for medium stems, until a stem bends without snapping and the leaves have flipped to a hard bright green, then lift them straight out and stand them upright to drain, with no ice bath, which only waterlogs them.
- Warm the ginger in the remaining oil for about 90 seconds, until it fizzes gently and smells sweet rather than raw, and stir the soy, water and sugar together in a separate bowl.
- Lay the greens in one direction on a warm dish, spoon the soy onto the plate rather than over the leaves, pour the ginger oil across the greens and eat while the stems still steam.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Blanching & shocking 76 recipes
- A large volume at a hard rolling boil, and enough of it that adding the food barely interrupts it; a pot that goes quiet has started stewing rather than blanching.
- Timed rather than watched, and short. This is an interruption in the cooking of something, not the cooking of it.
- The ice bath was made and standing beside the pot BEFORE anything went into the water, not started once the timer went off.
- It went straight into the ice water, fully submerged, and stayed until cold at the centre: a piece still warm inside is still cooking, and the arrest has not happened yet.
- Drained and dried afterwards rather than left sitting in water, so it does not carry that water into whatever it meets next.
Where it goes wrong The ice bath was not ready, so the food sat draining in a colander while its own residual heat carried on cooking it. By the time it cooled it was a stage past where it was pulled, and exact arrest is the entire reason for blanching rather than simply boiling.
Draining fried food: a rack, never paper 77 recipes
- The rack was in place before the first thing went into the oil, not fetched afterwards while food waited in a spider over the pot.
- It lands on a rack with air moving underneath it. Anything set down on paper or a flat plate traps its own steam against its base.
- Salted within seconds of landing, while it is still hot enough to take seasoning.
- A minute later the underside is still as crisp as the top: no soft flat patch where it has been sitting.
- Nothing is stacked or piled while hot, however tempting it is to keep it together. A pile steams itself soft from the inside out.
Where it goes wrong It was drained on paper, or piled up to keep warm. Steam leaving the food has nowhere to go but back into the crust, so the underside softens within a minute: the crispness the frying just bought is gone before the plate reaches the table.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Grüner Veltliner
- Also Right
- Vermentino or dry Chenin
- From the Taps
- Saison
- Zero-Proof
- Sparkling water with citrus & herbs
The vegetable whisperers: peppery, high-acid whites that flatter greens, roots, and grains without bullying them.
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