Chinese water chestnuts and cabbage, stir-fried with whole spices

Heat up your favorite wok to cook these two ingredients of different textures, stir-fried in oil perfumed with typical Chinese whole spices.

Serves: 2, if served with rice for the main course

Preparation: 20 minutes

Cooking: 10-15 minutes

The cooked dish, served in a small bowl; the whole chili pepper and cinnamon are more than just ornaments (read below) - CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

While there are a lot of restaurants which advertise themselves as “Asian”, most of them are (sometimes awesome) buffets offering Western-Asian food. It wasn’t until I met a Japanese student, two decades ago, that I had dinner at an actual Japanese restaurant in France. I don’t recall ever going to an actual Chinese restaurant, and this is something which contributed to my late interest to Chinese cuisine.

Of course, I’ve already enjoyed Cantonese rice at Asian buffet restaurants, or frozen from the supermarket. However, this was only one dish among the huge variety of what Chinese cuisine offers. Fast forward several years. In parallel of refining my vegan versions of a Cantonese rice and Chow Mein recipes (more on that in the future), I obtained the book The Wok Cookbook: 200 Recipes for Stir-Frying Success by pure chance. I was walking to the office in the morning, and decided to take a longer route than usual, going down a paved lane for a change. I spotted a small collection of books on the window sill of the ground floor of a residential building, along with a sign: “Free”. This is how I came to own a copy of this very inspiring book, featuring a lot of Chinese recipes I started to experiment with. The last (and lasting) incentive for me to try more of Chinese recipes was when I watched Flavorful Origins on Netflix. Although most, if not all the recipes aren’t vegan, the show is sharing a lot of ideas about cooking techniques, noodles making, and ingredients I want to try.

Sometimes I stumble upon food I’ve never seen before in a shop, and I want to taste it. I had a good surprise with enokitake (エノキタケ) mushrooms, and a bad one with kola nuts — despite my wife having warned me to buy only one for a try. Still, the first time I saw a can of water chestnuts shelved along with Asian imported products, I wondered what this was, and I wanted to taste. So I bought only one can - lesson’s learned, honey!

About water chestnuts

7 water chestnuts, out from a can, on a bamboo cutting board - CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Chinese water chestnut (Eleocharis dulcis), despite the name, is not a nut. It’s an aquatic vegetable which grows underwater, in marshes, and whose corms are edible. Like lotus root, it remains crisp after being cooked, which is an interesting property to bring a distinctive texture to a stir-fried dish. Water chestnuts have a very light nut-like taste; they’re more appreciated for their crunchiness than for their taste. Although they don’t absorb flavors like tofu, they’ll carry on some of the ingredients’ aromas they’re cooked with. With 41 kcal, 8.6 g of carbohydrates, including 0.5 g of sugar for 100 g, water chestnuts won’t hurt your diet. As unexpected as it can read, I shop for canned boiled water chestnuts in one of my local supermarkets, in Europe.

Ingredients

All the needed ingredients for the recipe (except corn oil, and white pepper which are not pictured) - CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

• 250 g water chestnuts (mine come from a can)

• 230 g Chinese cabbage (either a very small one, or the core of a larger cabbage, as it was the case for me)

• 4 shallots ~ 130 g

• 5 small garlic cloves ~ 10 g

• 15 g ginger root

• 2 bay leaves

• 2 cinnamon sticks

• 4 star anises (or pieces amounting to 4, if like mine they’re broken)

• 4 cloves

• 25 g fresh coriander

• 4 black cardamoms

• 1 large, dried Yidu chili pepper (it’s not a hot chili pepper, it is only aromatic)

• 6 soup spoons of corn oil

• 6 soup spoons of soy sauce¹

• 1 pinch of white pepper

Preparation

This recipe requires little preparation from you if you buy canned water chestnuts — fresh ones will need more handling. I read the habit in Chinese cuisine is to complete preparation first, as a separate activity from cooking. This goes very well with my approach, that I keep on repeating in my recipes: prepare everything first, only then move on the Cooking steps.

1. Rinse the water chestnuts, then slice them; you should manage to cut at least 3 slices out of each chestnuts, maximum 4

2. Wash the Chinese cabbage, then chop finely

3. Wash the fresh coriander, reserve 5 leafy stems, chop the rest

4. Peel the ginger root, then cut into thin matchsticks

5. Peel the shallots, cut in half length-wise, then slice both halves width-wise in 2-3 cm large pieces

6. Peel the garlic, cut in half length-wise

Ingredients, after preparation - CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Cooking

I used my favorite, carbon-steel wok. It’s well-seasoned, and I’ve reserved it only for Japanese and Chinese stir-fried dishes since the last time I deep-cleaned it. As mentioned in the Preparation steps, complete all of them before moving with the Cooking ones below, as per the Chinese habit.

1. Heat the wok to medium flame/power

2. Add 5 soup spoons of corn oil, making a circle from the top edge so oil will slide to the bottom and cover the side; you can move the wok to ensure the (inner!) side of the wok is oiled; wait for the oil to heat

3. Add whole spices (bay leaves, star anises, black cardamoms, Yidu chili pepper, cinnamon sticks, cloves); stir for 1 minute

4. Here you have two options:

   1. You can remove the whole spices with a skimmer, so the final dish can be eaten without verifying what your chopsticks grab

   2. You can leave the whole spices and let them continue to infuse the dish; I would refrain from eating the star anises (although you can), however the others can be eaten or easily removed — leaving the whole spices in is by far my favorite option

5. Add shallot, garlic, ginger, and the 5 fresh coriander leaves which you didn’t chop; stir for 30 seconds

6. Increase the heat to 80% of the maximum

7. Add water chestnuts, then 1 soup spoon of oil and 4 soup spoons of soy sauce on top of them

8. Stir for 1 to 2 minutes; ensure the water chestnuts slices blend into the mass of ingredients already present in the wok

9. Add chopped cabbage, fresh coriander, 2 soup spoons of soy sauce; stir for 1 to 2 minutes, until the cabbage starts to loose its crispiness

10. Stop heating; add 1 pinch of white pepper, then give a last stir

Shallot, garlic, ginger, and fresh coriander joining the whole spices sizzling in the corn oil (step 5) - CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

You can serve this right away, with jasmin-flavored Thai white rice for example. It will work with noodles, or just as is. I micro-waved a serving I had stored in the fridge, ate it with Thai red rice, and it was great. I haven’t tried, however, re-heating a frozen serving, so I can’t recommend anything for long-term storage. The whole spices were not an issue for me (especially because I knew they were present), and I enjoyed eating the black cardamoms and few pieces of star anises — beware, their taste is strong. I want to make a special mention to the Yidu chili pepper, which didn’t turn the dish spicy in any way — it’s not hot as I wrote in Ingredients. It was however a pure delight to eat with the water chestnuts. Next time I’ll add more of them to the recipe!

The cooked dish, still in the wok, with the Yidu chili pepper at the bottom left - CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Enjoy!

If you’ve tried the recipe, and would like to comment - whether you loved it, or hated it - please do so. I’m welcoming ideas, even if these are non-vegan recipes I’ll have the challenge to “veganize”.

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Here’s a tip before you go

Although whole spices in this recipe have been cooked in oil, then in soy sauce, they’re still fragrant at the end of cooking. I definitely recommend to eat the chili pepper and the black cardamoms with the dish, however you can retrieve the cinnamon sticks and star anises to re-use them in further recipes. You can infuse them in tea, or coffee. If you don’t re-use them right away, store them in your fridge for a hand of days, or your freezer for an extended period of time.

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1. Be cautious: soy is a known allergen