Tatsoi with Mushrooms and Indian Spices

One of my new favorite cookbooks is Sylvia Thompson's "The Kitchen Garden Cookbook" (NY: Bantam, 1995). I was so happy when a customer brought in a copy to trade in our used bookstore and immediately smuggled it home to peruse. The book is organized by vegetable types and has so many unusual treatments for veggies that Dan and I have been consulting it frequently as the motor on the home garden has started to cycle.

Our crop of Tatsoi, little baby bok choy, started to flower now that the warmer weather is here, so it was time to start harvesting. The Kitchen Garden has lots of intriguing recipes for Asian greens and a passing blurb caught my attention about how one might prepare them in an Indian manner with spices and mushrooms. I headed out to the garden patch and within half an hour had a delectable stir-fry lunch for my sweetheart and I to gobble for renewed rounds of last-week-of-school chauffeuring for the girls.

We liked this recipe so much we made it again for supper last night, using chopped up portabellas. It was good that way too, but I think the portabellas' rich flavor got somewhat lost in this spicy dish so I would stick with the plain white mushrooms for this recipe.

Tatsoi with Mushrooms and Indian Spices

2 big bunches tatsoi, bok choy or other mustardy/cabbagey greens, chopped, stalks even more finely chopped so they cook evenly

1 (10 oz.) pkg. mushrooms, cleaned and quartered

2 bay leaves

2 Tbsp. peanut oil

2 tsp. turmeric

2 tsp. cumin seeds (ground cumin would be acceptable, but the seeds really pop nicely in your mouth)

5 cloves garlic, minced

1 onion, sliced thinly

Heat oil in wok or large frying pan. Add garlic and stir, one minute. Add onions and spices and cook, stirring, another 1-2 minutes. Add mushrooms and tatsoi and stir well to wilt, then cover and cook until soft, about 5 minutes.

Serve over rice. Try to fish out the bay leaves before serving as they are rather stiff and pointy.

Serves 3-4.

Leftovers are fantastic the next day.

I am submitting this recipe to the monthly blog event, Grow Your Own, hosted by Andrea's Recipes. This is a cooking event which I just discovered and am wild over as I love to garden and preserve the harvest in my freezer, new (well, newly garaged-saled) dehydrator, and in the canning pot. Grow Your Own features recipes about edibles that participants have either grown or raised themselves, foraged or hunted/fished.