Red Cooked Cabbage

Red cooking is an important cooking technique in northern, eastern, and southeastern China in which ingredients are stewed in a poaching liquid containing soy sauce, fermented bean paste, red fermented tofu and/or caramelized sugar to give the final dish a reddish-brown hue and savory flavor.  The following, adapted from a recipe presented in Kenneth H.C. Lo’s excellent 1974 “Chinese Vegetarian Cooking” (ISBN 978-0394706399) uses the red cooking technique to prepare an incredibly tasty Chinese cabbage dish.   Consider serving it (and its cooking sauce) as a topping over plain boiled or other rice dishes. 

2 tablespoons canola oil
3 garlic cloves, crushed
1 tablespoon ginger paste
1 medium onion, thinly sliced
2 pounds Chinese cabbage, cut into 1x3” strips
¼ cup soy sauce
1 tablespoon sugar
½ cup stock
salt and freshly ground white pepper, to taste
2 tablespoons Chinese rice wine (or dry sherry)

Place oil in large pan over medium-high heat.  Add in the garlic, ginger and onion.  Stir fry for 2 minutes.  Add in the cabbage, and stir fry until wilted, another 5 minutes.  Add in soy sauce, sugar, and stock.  Adjust seasonings with salt and pepper.  Bring to a boil, reduce heat to medium-low and cook uncovered until the cabbage is tender and the sauce has reduced by ½ its volume.   Remove from heat and toss in the rice wine or sherry. 

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