Me: so how do like the dish?

Megan: mediocre.

Me: I think you just don’t like cooked greens

Megan: I don’t!

Me: 😐

Monday I made the Snow Pea Shoots with Lobster Sauce (with or without Crabmeat) recipe from J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s The Wok cookbook.

Like the Shrimp with Lobster Sauce recipe, this dish contains zero lobster. Apparently it’s the sauce from a lobster dish, reused in other dishes. I couldn’t find snow pea shoots (and honestly I didn’t have much hope for finding them), so I substituted with spinach, as Kenji notes, “if you can't find them, you can use regular pea shoots, watercress, or any other stir-fry green in this book.” I also opted not to add the optional crab. I’m sure it would’ve been delicious, but crab can just be so expensive.

The sauce uses a similar egg-ribboning technique as Shrimp with Lobster Sauce and Slippery Egg with Mushrooms. The dish comes together easily: stir-fry garlic and ginger then add the greens. Remove all that to a serving dish and simmer the sauce until thick. Drizzle the egg and stir into ribbons. Pour all that on top of the greens.

I thought the dish tasted good. Megan and I had the above conversation about it, so I finally understand why these past few dishes have been such disappointments for her! I asked her if she it ranked among other spinach dishes, what a preferable spinach preparation for her would be, and she said, “raw.” So, there you have it, she just doesn’t like cooked greens.

I’ll keep this recipe on hand if I’m cooking for more than just my family, but won’t make it again if I’m the only one that will like it. Thankfully this is the last dish in the stir-fried greens section.

I am cooking my way through J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s The Wok cookbook. Read more about it.