Mei Gan Cai (Fermented Dried Mustard Greens)
Sometimes I fall down the rabbit hole of making things traditionally in order to experience and understand the work and history that goes into food (and subsequently culture.) Mei gan cai kou rou (梅乾菜燜肉) is a dish my mom and grandma used to make–soft fatty melt in your mouth pork and salty tangy mustard greens braised together, perfect over hot white rice or in sweet fluffy mantou buns.
I grow both mustard greens and daikon radishes (both closely related in the Brassicaceae family) and often use the greens interchangeably. When I had to harvest the daikon quickly and ahead of schedule this year due to a sudden and early plummet of temperature, the leaves were perfectly tender and I sought to attempt to make this for storage. I already dry mustard/radish greens for soup for storage, and I also braise it regularly as one of my favorite cold veggie dishes (recipe here), or sometimes I make it into kimchi, so fermenting and then drying it didn’t seem that difficult.
And it technically wasn’t? Sort of. The steps were by themselves not difficult but it was actually pretty time intensive. After cutting them off the radish, I washed the greens and massaged them with a couple of tablespoons of kosher salt in my trusty food bucket (yes, I have a food bucket), and left it to leech liquid overnight. The next morning, I added a teaspoon of sugar, massaged some more, and placed it into a fermentation container, leeched liquid and all. I allowed it to sit undisturbed for about two weeks, until it was bubbling. It took a lot longer to ferment than I expected, considering when I make kimchi it only takes a few days but kimchi tends to have more feed for the wild germs in the form of fruit.
The next part my husband and the kids were not a fan of: Once fermented and tangy, I dried it in my dehydrator overnight, and steamed it the next day. I repeated this process three times and they were not a fan of the aroma that filled the house–first from the dehydrator and then from the steaming.
Upon cooling from the last dry cycle, it was fragrant and triggered washes of nostalgia over me every time I opened the container. A big box full of greens turned into just a couple ounces with all the complex flavors concentrated down, which I split to friends and family.
It’s a wonderful method of preservation–and I mused when it was because someone kept forgetting to eat it after making it that they put it through so many cycles of dry and steam that it was created–otherwise how did anyone think to do this?!
I can’t wait to use it for that iconic dish!
