Recipe: Napa Cabbage Steamed with Shiitake Mushrooms

Recipe

Napa Cabbage Steamed
with Shiitake Mushrooms and Tree Ears

Serving Size: 4
Preparation Time: 0:10

1 cup water
pinch salt
4 each shiitake mushrooms, dried—stems removed
1 tbl tree ears, dried
1 lb Napa cabbage shredded

Preparation

Bring the water to the boil and add the dried mushrooms and tree ears (a black curly dried fungus) and let them steep and soak up the water so that they get soft. Turn off the fire as soon as you add them. When the mushrooms are soft, julienne them, and discard stems which are too tough to eat.
Shred the Napa Cabbage, and add it to the pot with the shiitake mushrooms and tree ears with what ever water remains. There should be at least 2 or 3 tablespoons of water. Cover the pot, turn the fire to high, and in a minute or two the cabbage will have heated and become soft and collapsed. (It has a lot of water in it.)

That's it! season with a little extra salt if you feel it is needed. Most of the time, when I had it in China, it was just plain, with nothing, and you got a large bowl with every meal, which everyone finished with gusto. I guess its just not a meal without a large bowl of steamed cabbage. The Napa cabbages there were huge. It looked like they weighed 10 lbs each. It was a mainstay of the local diet, and after a while, the plain slightly sweet taste of the cabbage grows on you and cleans the palate for the next bite of something savory, much like rice does. This is a simple basic dish. You could add small shrimps to steam in with the cabbage, as they are farmed there in Liezhow.