Michili Ouch

This year I started some Michili Chinese cabbage indoors clear back in February, and transplanted it into the garden as soon as the weather allowed. It's been doing better than the regular cabbage or broccoli. Apparently it does well in cool weather, and has had a great spring so far, since this spring has been cooler than usual. The leaves have been getting bigger and bigger, and finally this evening I harvested some for dinner.

Problem: the leaves and stems of this variety have hundreds of little prickly spines on them. This is one of the reasons I left them so long before I harvested any; I just was not sure what to do with all those little spines. As I cut the outer leaves off the plants, carried them into the house, washed them and chopped them, I kept getting stuck by the spines, which my skin reacted to with redness and even a few tiny swollen spots. (Those went away in about half an hour or so.) These leaves may be food--but they're darned unpleasant to harvest and work with! So what ended up happening? Were we able to have it for dinner, or was it the opposite scenario?

We ate it. I washed it, chopped it, and stir-fried it with some pieces of chicken breast, green garlic, green onion, baby bok choy from the farmers' market, a little salt, black pepper and low-sodium soy sauce. It tasted just fine; no spines detectable at all. I suspected the spines would wilt when cooked, and fortunately I was right, or I'd probably have already been out there uprooting the rest of the plants! So we'll use the rest this year and I'll harvest it with gloves on, but I might not be so quick to plant it next year. Perhaps I'll plant bok choy instead, as it tastes just as good but doesn't seem to have any spines whatsoever.