Much ado about ... cabbages?

In my last post I said that I was particularly looking forward to harvesting Chinese cabbage (aka, "Napa"). Unfortunately, things didn't go exactly to plan with it. First, it was taking a long time to form a head. I tried tying it up a bit with some jute and eventually I could see that the head was forming properly. After that I was checking it every other day. These are supposed to form a compact head, something like a Savoy cabbage, only taller, but mine never got that far. Instead, just as I was closing the tunnel for the night I found that the plant had sent up a flower head and was in the process of "bolting":

When a plant bolts, it generally becomes more bitter. The plant wants to set seed so that it can reproduce itself and when it enters the flowering stage it redirects much of the stored energy (sugars) from the roots and foliage (the parts we usually want to eat) to flower and seed production. I wasn't sure how far gone the process was or how edible the plant was at this stage so I harvested it and did a couple of taste tests.

First I just shredded part of one of the outer leaves and offered it around to test when eaten raw. I didn't think it was too bad, but it got more upturned noses than thumbs. Napa cabbage is quite tasty when thinly sliced as per Cole's Law, but considering that this one hadn't formed a head, had green leaves instead of paler or white ones and was in the process of bolting, it didn't taste bad raw, but I'd obviously be better off cooking it if we were going to enjoy eating it. With the rest of the outer leaf I whipped up a quick stir-fry with garlic, ginger, spring onion, sambal oelek (chilli paste), sesame oil and a dash of soy sauce:

This time the taste testing went much better, with the only complaint being that I didn't make enough for everyone. In fact, it went down so well that we decided we'd have something similar the following day. I used about half of the cabbage (the inner part) to make pork yaki udon, which is basically a stir-fry with cooked udon noodles added at the last minute (yaki soba is more common, but I hadn't got soba noodles). The only changes I made to the seasoning was to replace the sharp sambal oelek paste with a sweet chilli sauce to mask or balance any bitterness. That also went down very well.

Overall, I was reasonably happy with the way the napa turned out, despite it bolting. For an investment of one square foot and 56 days (which would have been longer—up to 85 days—if it hadn't bolted) you could provide 8 people with a dinner green. That's all well and good, but not the most exciting way to use napa cabbage. In my next post, I'll follow up with the reason that I was most looking forward to this crop—making kimchi.