Sauteed Pea Shoots

Dou miao (pea shoots) are one of my favorite simple Chinese sauteed vegetables.  All you do is stir-fry them briefly with minced garlic, a splash of soy, a little chicken stock and voila.  It's totally delicious and incredibly easy to throw together as a quick side.  Pea tendrils earlier in the season are a little more delicate than pea shoots, so I would recommend using those instead if you can find them.  At this point in the summer all that I could find was pea shoots, but it worked out ok.  I would probably roughly chop the pea shoots in the future so you don't end up with really long strings of veggies in every bite, but otherwise I think the dish was pretty good as is. 


Recipe after the jump!

Sauteed Pea Shoots


INGREDIENTS
1 lb pea shoots, trimmed and tough stems removed
2 tbsp vegetable oil
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 cup chicken stock
2 tsp soy sauce
sesame oil
salt


Preheat large wok or skillet over medium heat.  Add oil.  Once oil is hot, add garlic and cook until fragrant, about 15-30 seconds.  Raise heat to high and throw in pea shoots.  Toss pea shoots to coat evenly in to oil and garlic until leaves are just beginning to wilt, about 1 minute.  Add stock and soy sauce and cook, stirring frequently, until sauce has reduced to a few tbsp and shoots are tender and bright green, about 1-2 minutes.  Drizzle with sesame oil and season with salt to taste.


Serve immediately.