Stir-Fried Kangkung with Garlic, Fish Sauce and Lime

Kangkung (water spinach) has been the most generous one in our garden this mid-autumn. If we don't have anything else to harvest, we will have kangkung. We have been harvesting kangkung weekly in autumn season. With its cut and come again personality, you don't need much space to grow them. Twenty-ish degree Celsius (minimum) and plenty of water (moisture) during their growing season, reward guaranteed from kangkung.

A small corner where most of our kangkung supply came from.

My favourite kangkung dish is to stir-fry it with chillies and shrimp paste (belachan) which is a popular dish in Malaysia which we call 'Kangkung goreng sambal belacan'. Eating out at any of Malaysia local family restaurant and you see this dish on the menu.

But I decided to try something new.

So I was flicking through Gordon's Great Escape Southeast Asia recipe book and saw one of the recipe "stir-fried water spinach with garlic, fish sauce and lime"  at the Vietnam section and decided to try it with some minor changes. The recipe instructed to blanch the kangkung first. But I did not blanched the kangkung as it will wilted rather quickly when stir-fry in a wok from experience. I think you can use this recipe as well for sweet potato young shoots. Liz  (Suburban Tomato) asked me weeks ago how to prepare sweet potato young shoots. Sweet potato young shoot and kangkung plants are related and belong to the same family with morning glory.

Stir-fried kangkung with garlic, fish sauce and lime

Ingredients:
1 bunch washed kangkung (cut abouth the length of match)
2 tbsp vegetable oil
4 garlic cloves finely chopped
1 tbsp fish sauce
1/2 tbsp oyster sauce
juice of 1~2 limes ( 1 lime was more than enough for me)

- Heat vegetable oil
- Saute garlic until fragrant
-Toss in water spinach and stir
-Add fish sauce, oyster sauce and lime. Mix well.
-Stir until kangkung has wilted and quickly transfer to plate.

Express cooking.

Quick to prepare.

Convenient for busy mother.

Join in Wendy's Garden To Table Challenge.

First Fall Harvest 2012

Pak choi helps to fill in the gap at the moment while waiting for the warm loving vegetables to bounce back after the summer heat. Some chillies were available to pick frequently came fall. Surprisingly cabbage verona purple savoy has been doing amazingly well through out summer as we have been able to pick it fortnightly from late spring. Those cabbages were planted in winter. Hubby also cheated sometime not watering them frequently. Once established, this variety is a very heat tolerant plant. The ones we planted in fall, many of them bolted in winter.

Pull out some carrots (Topweight/New Kuroda?) as the mice has their eye on them. Nibbling on it sometime. Some ripe peppers were also harvested.

Second batch of kangkung/water spinach for 2012 made its way to the kitchen. First fall cucumber. I think we used up many fresh onions this month, mama using them a lot. Probably she like the fresh onion sweet flavour. Some beans and cherry tomatoes.

Cut some rainbow chard/swiss chard from a flowering plant. It is a part that grows from the bottom of the plants that look like a separate plant. I was curious whether it will taste bitter or it usual taste. It tasted ok not bitter.

Visit Daphne's Dandelions to share or see all around the world gardeners harvest.

Veggies for kitchen 1st half May

Bean...bean...bean...chili...chili...chili...daikon...daikon...daikon thinnings, da cheong chae and yellow tomatoes are the main harvest for the first half of May. Yellow tomatoes plant were looking sad in end summer but now it is lush again with many fruits on it. The cooler weather makes it longer for the green ones to turn yellow though. Yellow cherry tomato seems to be more hardy in our veggie patch. Mrs Bok asked me does sweet potatoes grow well in clay soil? We only got one small tubers from each plant of sweet potatoes that were growing in clay soil about 5 months. Total harvest was less than what we got from growing a plant of sweet potatoes in container which we harvested last month. Sweet potatoes not suitable to grow in clay soil in temperate region where we don't have warm weather all year round like in the tropics. Sweet potato roots did go deeper into the soil but perhaps it will take longer to form bigger tubers.

I was tidying up some container last week and harvested most of the carrots that were growing with melon plants sowed in early January. This is New Red Kuroda carrot variety, I should have let them grow more but well Rayyan not happy on having daikon thinnings for a week everyday. He missed carrots.

Harvested the last kangkung and bonito eggplants from our veggie patch last week. I am going to miss fried kangkung with chili and shrimp paste. It will be another 5 months I reckon we have another kangkung (water spinach) in our kitchen.

There are so many farewell in the garden this month.Last cucumber and snake beans were harvested last week for this year. However, there were also many exciting and new things comin in our kitchen this week, the first snow peas of year 2011 and full kernal of fresh sweet corns! My other-half said I never had success growing sweet corns in Adelaide that look almost perfect. Our sweet corn usually have so many gaps that you can count how many kernals is on the cob. This time I don't even help with pollination and mulched because I always feel dissapointed with the result. Now, I feel more motivated to grow sweet corn. Sweet corn is a heavy feeder and drinker. Feeding them with enough compost and manure is not a problem but water is something we can't give that much. Summer evoparation is so high here which is the time when sweet corn starts to produce after sowing them in spring. I think it is best to sow sweet corn end of February and early March because we have more water in autumn when they are producing cobs.

Not much time and creative in the kitchen this week as I was busy in school and Ilhan and Lenay were sick for days. Vegetables were fresh but instant pasta sauce were famous in our kitchen last week. Here is all the ingredient ready to be cook with instant carbonara pasta sauce.

Did not have much appetite on the weekend, so exhausted after a hectic week being a mother, student and temporary nurse. So I made my own appertiser to eat with Nasi Goreng Tuna (Fried Rice Tuna) ~ Sambal belacan. The photo look like cherry tomato mud bath because I got overboard with belacan (shrimp paste). In the mortar, put in shallot/red onion, shrimp paste, garlic and chillies and grind. Add a bit of sugar, salt and squeeze in some lemon juice. Mix well. You can add in dice tomato and coriander if you like. Since we have many yellow cherry tomatoes, I add these tomatoes in this sambal belacan. Hazel asked how we used okra, sometime we blanched okras and dip in sambal belacan as well (Cat-from-Sydney reminded me). Wendy is hosting Garden To Table Challenge.

See what other garden around the world is harvesting at the moment visit Harvest Monday with our fantastic host Daphne.

Kangkung (空心菜) @ Water Spinach

Kangkung is a perennial vine that belongs to the same group as morning glory so it is also known as water morning glory and same genus as sweet potato. As it is a semi-aquatic tropical plant, it thrives in very damp area like swamp or water-ways. In Malaysia, it is a very popular stir-fried with garlic, shallot, chilies and shrimp paste (belacan).

My memories of kangkung in my childhood was looking at my father favourite tortoise pet feeding on it. How nice to be young, I actually got time to gaze at how that tortoise eating it and how long does it take to finish it out of boredom. Hmm…in my teens, I always wonder why my mama keep the bottom stem root part and not throw it in the bin. Then saw her sticking the root in the soil. A few days later, some leaves appeared. She was growing kangkung this way. But I don’t spent too much in the garden, except reluctantly watering the plants like a shinkansen (bullet train). I wish that I-pod were invented that time so I don’t need to listen that the pots were not moist enough like my sisters. In college, I was surprised to find that kangkung were sold in Niigata (Japan) but only during summer. Niigata prefecture has the most ski resort places in Japan so several months of deep snow here. I was so excited about it I told my Japanese friend, they were shocked a young person like me like this veggie as not many Japanese people like it. No wonder it was cheap 100Japanese Yen a bunch. Lucky me, because I came to love this vegetables in my college years. Funny, when I tend to become home-sick, I appreciate this vegetable more. Maybe because of those memories.

Don’t they look like chicken feet?

Different stages of kangkung seedlings growth.

Kangkung leaves ready to be harvested. No need to harvest the whole leaves. But just cut some leaves that need to be used in the kitchen. Can you see some kangkung hollow stem that have been cut.

Kangkung grows well sharing container with leeks and chives.

When harvesting kangkung leaves make sure there are some leaves left at the bottom. It takes about 2~3 weeks for kangkung to grow and be ready for the next harvest (this will also depend on the environmental factor such as temperature at your place). I presume in tropical areas it will grow much faster. This is growing in Mediterranean climate.

Today harvest, after I have cleared up two containers that were growing kangkung and some leeks too from one of the container.

We have been enjoying fresh kangkung harvest for at least 5 months now. Only one pot left growing kangkung. I cried a bucket of tears today due to some stress reasons and release it on the kangkung. So the soil should be moist for them.