Tofu and Chinese Broccoli

I lay on my yoga mat at the end of yesterday’s grueling class, wondering what to make for dinner.  I was supposed to be spending the time meditating in corpse pose; the instructor had firmly warned us to let any invading thoughts drift away like clouds in a gentle breeze.  The snores from the person next to me, however, suggested that I wasn’t the only person not dedicating this time to spiritual development.  In a way, my dinner deliberations weren’t completely mundane.  I like to think of them as a sort of Zen Kōan: what does a tired, uninspired girl cook? 

The answer to this question didn’t come in corpse pose.  I entered the grocery store with no plan in mind, living enough in the present to please the strictest yogi.  Then, like a tree falling in an empty forest, the answer appeared before me.  There, in the middle of Shaw’s, was a beautiful selection of Chinese broccoli (jie lan).  This vegetable was one of the staples of my diet in China, but I have never before seen it for sale in America before except in Chinese markets.  Jie lan’s flavor is similar to broccoli, with a slightly spicier aftertaste.  I stir-fried it with oyster sauce, and its crisp sweetness was a great change from my usual vegetables.         

With the jie lan, I served a spicy tofu with ground pork.  Unlike Americans, who generally relegate bean curd to bland, hippy cuisine, the Chinese often use tofu as a vessel for meat.  I fried my bean curd until golden brown and then added some ground pork, plenty of ginger and garlic, red pepper paste, and fragrant Sichuan peppercorns.  The results were delicious enough to make Alex declare, “I think I like tofu,” in an astonished voice.