I don’t remember children in my childhood days in Singapore being so fussy about eating their greens. It seems to be a big and fairly universal problem here in Britain, if not the whole of the Western world.
The Brits are traditionally known for boiling their veg to death. One reads stories about cabbage cooked until a pulp, leaving the house reeking of cabbage for weeks. No wonder the Brits hate the cruciferous family of veg. They are very nutritious, yet are avoided whenever possible, it seems.
It is, therefore, the presentation that’s at fault — in this case, over-cooking it, not flavouring it except with water and salt. (To be fair, the Brits have come a long way since with their attitude to cooking, to the point where Britain has built up quite a reputation for its gastronomy.)
It’s almost unheard of in Chinese cooking to just boil their veg, never mind boil it to death.
It’s so easy to be a vegetarian in Singapore — out East as a whole region, actually.
One can just have three basic staple flavouring ingredients for a stir-fry: soya sauce, garlic, red chilli.
There’s a wide range of green leafy veg in the market. Just stir-fry any of those with the three ingredients, and each one will come out tasting delicious — and different, purely on the basis of their own flavour. Hardly any work at all.
Just to name a few off the top of my head:
* Indian spinach (the stalks are reddish at the base)
* Chinese mustard leaves (commonly served in a Chinese restaurant)
* amaranth
* sweet potato leaves
* pak choi
* mange tout (/snow peas)
* runner beans
They all taste different from each other, so there’s no need to wrack one’s brain for different — let alone elaborate — cooking methods (unless one likes to experiment). Just use soya sauce, garlic, and red chilli. Pak choi is very bland, so it doesn’t even need garlic or red chilli.
Brussels sprouts can be quartered and stir-fried the same way. One can vary it by adding dried mushrooms — the dark brown of the mushroom in combination with the dark green of the sprouts makes a visually attractive dish without having to do little presentation tricks like drizzling some arty sauce around it on the plate or topping it with a carved vegetable rose. Just stir-fry and serve.
Oh yes, forgot about the contribution of the garlic and red chilli: white/cream of the garlic, red of the chilli. That’s four colours in one dish without needing to have a creative streak. (That’s why I like it, as I’m not arty at all…)
