Tenderstem Broccoli with Oyster Sauce(西蘭花苗配蠔油)

Introduction

Vegetables are usually very nutritious with not just dietary fibre, but also many micronutrients inside. You can see different vegetables in the supermarket and many are made as salads for cold servings. In fact, many of them can be boiled for meals. Boiled vegetables is easy to cook but seems boring to many cookery fans with a few steps and ingredients.

However, it is not the case in Hong Kong as Hongkongers like boiling vegetables with oil and salt to make the vegetables fresh to eat. Many vegetables can be boiled tasty with few ingredients. Tenderstem broccoli, a very common vegetable in the United Kingdom, can be boiled as a dish with few ingredients and the following recipe proves it:

Ingredients

• 200g Tenderstem Broccoli
• 4 pieces of Garlic
• 4 slices of Ginger
• 1 tablespoon Oyster Sauce
• 1 teaspoon of Sugar
• 1 teaspoon of Shaoxing Wine
• 1 teaspoon of Cooking Oil for boiling water
• 2 tablespoons of Cooking Oil for stir frying the crushed garlic

Cooking Steps

1. Rinse the tenderstem broccoli
2. Shred the hard fibre at the stem of the tenderstem broccoli
3. Slice the Ginger
4. Crush the Garlic
5. Boil the water in a pot
6. Put ginger slices, 1 teaspoon of sugar, 1 teaspoon of Shaoxing wine and 1 teaspoon of cooking oil into the boiling water
7. Put the tenderstem broccoli into the boiling water and boil the vegetable for 2 minutes
8. Place all tenderstem broccoli onto the plate
9. Heat the wok with 2 tablespoons of oil.
10. Adjust the stove to medium heat and stir fry the crushed garlic until the garlic is yellowish and gives the smell
11. Pour the crushed garlic with oil on the tenderstem broccoli
12. Add one tablespoon of oyster sauce on the tenderstem broccoli and serve

Cooking Tips

1. Sugar is added in the boiling water to keep the broccoli greenish
2. Cooking Oil is added to the boiling water to make the broccoli smooth
3. Shaoxing wine is added to the boiling water to make the broccoli fragrant
4. Crushed garlic sold in the supermarkets can also be used in this recipe
5. To enusre that the vegetables are clean without mud and less pesticides on them, the vegetables can be soaked in a bowl of water first for at least 10 minutes before rinising them
6. More time can be used to make the tenderstem broccoli more tender. You can try one of them to make sure that they are tender enough for serving
7. Do not spend too much time to boil the leafy vegetables or they become yellowish meaning many micronutrients are lost during boiling
8. For vegans, vegan mushroom vegetarian stir fry sauce can replace oyster sauce
9. To avoid glutens, gluten free oyster sauce is also a choice

Places of buying the Ingredients

They can be bought in the supermarkets.

Inspirations from this recipe

• Crushed garlic is commonly used for stir frying the leafy vegetables like spinach, choi sum and pak choi. I will post recipes of these leafy vegetables later
• As this dish is with few cooking steps, few ingredients and flavourings which are common in the supermarkets, they are cheap. So cooking this dish can reduce your cost of living. You can also crush the garlic yourself instead of buying bottles of crushed garlic in the supermarket to save money
• Not too much time is used for cooking this dish so it also saves a lot of time for preparing this nutritious and tasty dish. That's why it is popular in Hong Kong, a city with a fast working pace.

I hope this Tenderstem Broccoli with Oyster Sauce(西蘭花苗配蠔油) will bring you lots of joy after you cook and eat them.

First published in Medium