嗆包心菜 (Charred cabbage)

One of my favorite foods both to cook and eat.  Short ingredient list.  Neat technique.  Smoky.  Traditional.  About 60 cents per dish.  The final product's taste is highly dependent on the process: too little char and you get tough, flavorless cabbage with bitterness from the raw vegetable taste.  Too much char and it's cancerlicious and bitter from the burnt flakes of cabbage-turned-into-carbon.  When it's done right, it's sweet, smoky; it's tinged with bitterness, complex, and tender-crisp.  I still mess this up.

You need to have a well-seasoned wok or cast iron skillet to make this.  If you don't, don't bother trying.  To make it spicy, I find it simpler to substitute chili oil for the neutral oil rather than trying to cook chilis and peppercorns into the dish, but feel free to do whatever you want.  I like it both ways depending on what else is going on the table.

• 1 small head of cabbage (~ 1lbs.) OR .5 lbs each of red and green cabbage or some combination thereof.  Smaller cabbages tend to be sweeter, so go for them.
• 1 tablespoon canola oil OR 1 tablespoon chili oil
• 2 gloves garlic, minced
• 1 teaspoon of coarse sea salt, or kosher salt in a pinch
• OPTIONAL: 1 tablespoon Chinese black vinegar or balsamic vinegar
• OPTIONAL: Pinch of shredded Korean chili OR a few slivers of green onion green (see note on plating)

Quarter the cabbage(s) and cut out the root.  Don't be skimpy in discarding the root: it's like $0.40/lbs and it's not worth it.  Cut each quarter along the equator to get eight sections.  Place each section, without separating the leaves, onto the dry wok: it might look crowded, but that's okay.  Allow the cabbage to char for about 4 minutes, then rotate the pieces.  Continue moving around the segments and rotating the pieces until there are charred spots all over the cut surfaces of the cabbage (should be 3 sides per segment): if it starts coming apart, don't worry about it: try to avoid moving the cabbage around until the next layer is charred.   Once all the segments are charred all over, break up the segments into their constituent leaves, and allow to sit in the wok longer, charring the unexposed leaves.  Repeat this process, tossing briefly as necessary, until all the leaves show at least some charring- this takes some practice... good thing cabbage is cheap!  This process should also get easier as the cabbage shrinks from cooking and it starts fitting in your wok better.  Once all the cabbage leaves are tinged with charred spots, clear out the center of the wok and toast the sea salt (if your wok isn't seasoned so well, this is where you're going to see why I told you not to attempt this dish... everything will be stuck at this point and I don't know what to tell you!).  After about a minute, add the oil and garlic to the center and cook until just fragrant, about 30 seconds.  If using the vinegar, add it now to the oil in the center of the wok and let some of the acid release.  Toss to coat everything.  Adjust seasoning using extra sea salt or soy sauce, but most of the time you won't need any.  Once everything is well mixed, plate and serve.

Note on plating: when using green cabbage, I use shredded dried Korean chili for garnish.  For red, I use slivers of green onion greens.  When using both red and green, I arrange the red on the outside in a ring, green mounded in the center with dried Korean chili on top.