Have you heard of green dragon vegetables before? I’ve never heard of this vegetable, not until perhaps over a decade ago when it makes its appearance at the wet markets, supermarkets and Chinese restaurants. Green dragon vegetable is a direct literal translation of 青龍菜. It is called qing long cai in Mandarin and cheng loong choy in Cantonese. From what I’d gathered around the internet, green dragon vegetables (and yellow chives) are actually Chinese chives but grown using different techniques. Chinese chives, also known as garlic chives or 韭菜 or jiu cai (Mandarin) or gau choy (Cantonese) or ku chai (Hokkien) has flat green leaves.
The technique of growing green dragon vegetables actually borrows from yellow chives [韭黃 or jiu huang (Mandarin) or gau wong (Cantonese)]. To produce yellow chives (flat yellowish-whitish leaves due to lack of chlorophyll), the Chinese chives are covered totally without any sunlight. To grow Chinese chives into green dragon vegetables which have flat light green leaves, the chives are covered with thick nets to limit the sunlight. As a result of limiting the sunlight, the green dragon vegetable has fewer fibers, is tenderer and is very mild. It has its own distinctive fragrance when cooked.
I very very rarely cook green dragon vegetables even though I love them. Whenever I saw them at the market or supermarket, my mind will go into this stingy state which resulted in me not buying any in the end. How stingy? This stingy: “Aiyo, it’s expensive. Skip” or “RM5+ for so few strands/one vegetable? Why not spend the RM5+ on two/three different vegetables instead.” Well, recently I decided to spend more on good things that I like. But what do you know? A few weeks back, I found green dragon vegetables at Tesco (now Lotus’s) selling at RM2.99 @ 100g. Whooooo, win!
This dish is a result of it.
Stir-fried green dragon vegetables with prawns & white crab mushrooms is amazing. Give it a try!
