On Friday, Lee and I went out to eat Malaysian food at Penang in Bethesda. Penang is actually a small chain, and I’ve eaten at their restaurants in Chicago and New York. One of my favorite Malaysian dishes, which I first sampled at Penang in Chicago, is hollow vegetable (also known as water convolvulus) stirfried with chilies and shrimp paste (kang kung blachan). After some coaxing, Lee agreed to forgo beef in favor of this unknown vegetable.

However, when we attempted to order it, the waiter informed us that they didn’t have any hollow vegetable. We would have been satisfied with that answer, but the waiter went on to explain that kang kung has actually been banned in the US, which is why they don’t serve it anymore. Banned?! How can this be??? We ordered the beef rendang instead, and it was good, but no substitute for my beloved hollow vegetable. After dinner, I hit up the Google to find out if our waiter had been telling us the truth.

Water convolvulus aka “Chinese water spinach”, kang kung or kongxincai 空心菜 (Chinese translation: “hollow heart vegetable”) is considers a “noxious weed” by the USDA. You can only import it into the US with a special permit. Because it grows in water, raw water convolvulus may also carry water-born parasites. Cooked, it is a completely safe, but apparently a noxious weed. The point is, this is very sad because hollow vegetable is delicious and one of my favorite Asian vegetables.

For those of you that have never had the pleasure of munching on hollow vegetable (and, at the rate things are going, apparently never will unless you leave the country), it has a uniquely squishy-chewy texture. The stems are slightly crunchy at the outset, but give way easily because there is nothing in the middle. (If too mature, the stems will be tough.) The delicate leaves are soft and melt-in-your-mouth tender. The flavor is a bit woody and slightly bitter, a little bit like spinach crossed with chives. When stir-fried, the oil and flavors coat both the exterior and interior of the vegetable, allowing for a slightly greasy burst of flavor in your mouth. With the rich salty tang from the preserved shrimp and the popping heat of the chilies, it is truly divine.

Since a trip to South East Asia isn’t really on the budget right now, I believe the next best thing is to head north. There must still be hollow vegetable on the North American continent. This summer, I will be going to Canada and ordering myself a giant platter of kang kung. And, if the Canadian waiter tells me that hollow vegetable is banned, I will probably cry into my plate.

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During this time, southern ladies with handles such as “emptynester” or “2kidsmom” offered their opinions on razor scrapers, discussed the merits of Ceramabryte vs. Weiman cream polishes, comiserated over annoying “MILs” (Southern Living speak for “mother in law”), and recounted tales of scraping off boiled-over hot pepper jelly.

I felt like I entered into a different place… a place where people say “ya’ll”, actually make their own jellies, and are delighted by grandchild-proof burner switches. And, while this has been very educational and will hopefully lead to a cleaner range, I think I might be turning into a 57 year old woman from Texas.

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Just kidding. About the wench costume anyway; mustard yellow is so not my color. But not about the doppelganger. In the big, bad, blogosphere, there is a another Kitchen Wench. And she clearly has a better digital camera than me. More disturbing still is that she is also Asian and her name also starts with a vowel.

Okay, the vowel thing really isn’t weird, but the other similarities are a little troubling. As I see it, there are still a few things left to redeem me.

1. She lives in Australia. Australia is far away. I am perfectly content letting someone else be the official kitchen wench of Australia.
2. I have the .com extension (which I waited a full year to to purchase because some lady was using it to park her defunct catering start-up).
3. It’s hard to photograph food when you live in a basement apartment.
4. My basement apartment is awesome.
5. If Slim Shady can do it, so can I.
6. And, most importantly, this girl probably doesn’t know I even exist.

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I’ve been watching an awful lot of the Food Network lately, but the truth of the matter is, I haven’t cooked anything since those oatmeal cookies, save a delicious grilled Rachel sandwich. Ever since being spit out from my undergraduate institution last month, I’ve been trying to get my life reorganized for this rude entry into “The Real World.” Right now, that means being preoccupied with money (or lack thereof) until my first paycheck, as well as packing up everything I own in preparation for moving. This doesn’t leave me a lot of time or energy to cook, though I have obsessed over microwaves, glassware, and trying to fit a mandolin slicer into my check-in luggage.

Instead of creating, I have been consuming (albeit in moderation), but frankly, it’s just not the same. Good food is delicious, but I feel so… passive. And a little bit bored. Expect some changes in this blog in the upcoming weeks–it’s going to expand and change shape as I adjust to urban living, eating out on the cheap, dollar-streching, and cooking dinner for two most nights of the week. I’m pretty excited about getting back into a rhythm and getting creative–but that seems pretty far away at the moment.

In the meantime, it’s back to watching Paula find 101 uses for the canned biscuit.

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