Burmese Baby Bok Choy Salad

Your past experience, may be even your common sense, will tell you that bok choys are meant to be boiled, stir-fried or grilled. What if I tell you to fight those biases? Why, you ask? I am here to tell you that one of the best ways to enjoy bok choys is to actually eat them raw. I know this fleshy bonsai-looking vegetable does not look like something that will win the America’s Next Top Salad Green. But, trust me when I say that its seemingly fibrous stem is actually quite tender, juicy and crunchy. Moreover, I absolutely adore raw baby bok choys’ sweet pepperiness, reminiscent of a milder and a more palatable cousin called watercress. The last but definitely not least, compared to lettuce, bok choys hold up their shape so much better after being tossed in salad dressing, making them a wiser choice for packed lunches.

Gaw-bi-thoke - classic burmese cabbage cole slaw

Yum


Ok, back in January, Huffington post released an article, casting a long-over due spotlight on Burmese salads. My face brimmed up, as if I am Amy Shumer with a class of Chardonnay.  Yes, the world domination is here – Burmese food goes mainstream now.

Back in Myanmar, our family eat salads as a part of our daily meals along with curries, rice and soup, rather than as a bowl of self-deprived and monotonous leafage as a promise to achieve a better health. In fact, the salad culture is quite popular in Yangon, a bustling city of Myanmar where I grew up in. My fondest memory of Burmese salads was eating with my second eldest aunt at a roadside salad bar, draped in sun-bleached vinyl blue sheets to get shelter from the unforgiving tropical urban heat. (I used the word “bar” specifically because the experience actually felt like I was at a crowded bar at a club, where I have to use sign languages and yell to get some attention. There were usually one or two “salad masters” at the salad bar, with ten people shouting simultaneously on their orders.)