Recipe: Stir-fry Fragrant Garlic Stems

Garlic stems with fried garlic

Garlic Stems.

Does the name sounds intriguing to you? The name of the vegetable already describes the vegetables. They are lovely and sweet - long, thin and absolutely crunchy green stems with subtle hints of garlic flavour.

Have you tried this vegetable before? If you have not, I recommend that you should. It is very tasty. I used garlic stems in my mee siam and they added another dimension to the noodles, somewhat different from the normal and bland long beans.


I know that they do sell it in Malaysia because I saw it in the morning wet markets. I believe that they are imported from China - just like the ones sold here in Melbourne. I introduced the vegetables to my family in Malaysia recently and my brothers love it - and they are both do not like vegetables.

Try it on your loved ones who you think need to eat more vegetables - my guess is that they do not need to be coaxed to eat them (unless they hate garlic, of course.. or they are really, really anti-vegetables. =)

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This is my recipe:

Ingredients:

2 cloves of garlic - chopped finely
200g of garlic stems - sliced into 3 cm
1 tsp Shaoxing wine
1 tbsp water
1 tsp oil
salt to taste

Method

1. Fry garlic in oil until fragrant and golden in colour.

2. Add the garlic stems and mix well.

3. Add water, wine and salt to taste and let it simmer for 3 minutes until cooked.

4. Serve hot with rice

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This dish goes great with white rice. The fragrance of the wine and the sweetness from the fried garlic together with the crunchy vegetables made this an appetizing dish.

You may add fresh prawns to this dish. Prawns and garlic are the perfect match in food heaven. =)