This isn't really a "recipe"; call it "tale of a lunch".
I mostly eat vegetarian at home - my roommate is vegetarian and does the bulk of the cooking, and I'm lazy enough that I'm perfectly content to let her cook for me (I do the dishes, in return.) So we do a lot of our shopping at produce markets, when we get the chance.
I'll cook for myself, of course, when I have to. I'm home during the day now and find myself scrounging up lunch for myself, and I've been getting tired of peanut butter sandwiches, so I popped my head in the produce drawer and saw a full head of Chinese cabbage and an unopened container of baby bella mushrooms. Lunch!
So, starting with:
1 head of Chinese cabbage
1 box of baby bella mushrooms
I assembled a few more ingredients after rummaging around in our fridge and spice cabinet:
3-4 stalks of scallions
Sesame oil
Chili sesame oil
Low-sodium soy sauce
Garlic powder (no fresh cloves, boo)
Chinese mustard
Vegetable broth
First I cleaned and chopped up the veggies. Mushrooms - discard stems and slice caps. Scallions - discard both ends and chop up the tenderest middle parts (green and white) into 1/4 inch pieces. Cabbage - chop into roughly 1x2 inch pieces.
I put about a tablespoon of the regular sesame oil into a skillet and heated it up. In went the mushrooms and scallions, and a few shakes of soy sauce. (It's easy to overdue this but you don't want the mushrooms to become little salt pellets, so just be careful.) I sauteed them together until they were nice and soft.
Then I took the chopped cabbage, separating out mostly just the bits with the white stalk (yummiest part, I think). Threw in a few pinches of the Oriental mustard and the garlic powder. (If I'd had fresh garlic handy, that would've gone in earlier with the scallions; que sera sera.) Also added a few shakes of the chili sesame oil to give it a bit of bite. (YMMV.)
I stirred this around over the heat until everything started to look nice and wilty. At this point I added a splash of vegetable broth to thin out the liquid.
At the end I had a crunchy, earthy, savory little lunch that could easily go with rice, if I weren't so lazy. I ended up eating it as is with a glass of iced tea.
Mm, summer.
