Wilted Chard Salad with Cooked Garlic Dressing 凉菜

Wilted Chard with Cooked Garlic Dressing

A "Cold Dish", or  凉菜 Liángcài

The raw vegetable is an anathema in traditional Chinese cuisine. Vegetables, even in salads or cold dishes, aka Liángcài, are at the very least blanched before serving. An exception is cucumber salad, where the cucumber is crushed with the flat of a knife, roughly chopped, then a similar dressing is poured over the pieces. 

Serves 2 as a side dish 

I used a mixture of chard and spinach for this dish as that was what I had, but you can experiment with substituting different blanched and cooled vegetables, e.g. mung bean sprouts, other sprouted beans, nettles, calalloo, etc. This is a basic recipe - you can add chilli, sesame oil, toasted sesame seeds to your taste.

Chingkiang vinegar, 镇江香醋, pinyin: Zhènjiāngxiāngcǜ, is quite commonly available, particularly in Chinese supermarkets; I got mine in the Asian section of a large supermarket. If you can't get it, you can substitute balsamic at a pinch, but reduce or omit the sugar in the dish.

Ingredients:

200g leafy vegetable, e.g. spinach or chard

1 clove of garlic, chopped finely

Dressing:

2 tbsp vegetable oil, e.g. canola/rapeseed/peanut

3/4 of a tablespoon of chinkiang vinegar

the juice of 1 tbsp grated ginger

1/2 tsp sugar

1/8 tsp salt

Wilt the spinach either by blanching for 30 seconds in boiling water, then rinsing immediately with cold water, or by wilting in a hot frying pan, turning the spinach until all the leaves are wilted, then rinsing with cold water to stop the cooking process. 

Squeeze out the excess water from the vegetable with your hands. 

    

Ball up the spinach and chop it roughly, then put it in your serving dish. 

Arrange the raw garlic in a small pile in the centre of the spinach.

Mix the dressing ingredients in a small bowl.

In a pan heat the oil on a high heat until it is shimmering and starting to smoke. Pour the hot oil directly onto the garlic, which will immediately sizzle. Try to cover all the garlic with hot oil. Mix the oil into the spinach using a fork or chopsticks, then add the rest of the dressing, mixing to coat well. 

Serve as a side dish.