Joe and I have been on a dow mui kick for months now. We stumbled across this Chinese green (also know as pea shoots) at the Grand Sichuan in Chelsea. This is one of the better chinese restaurants in the city and it isn't even located anywhere near Canal Street. These little sprigs of green are bright to taste and almost as sweet as the peas they eventually produce.
Dow mui is easy to make. Simply saute the dow mui over hight heat with a little oil (corn is preferable but olive or peanut would do) for several minutes or until the leaves start to wilt and the stalks just give to the tooth - kind of al dente for pea shoots. Just before you remove the shoots from the wok, add salt and garlic slivers, toss to combine and serve immediately. 1 pound of dow mui will make enough for 2-3 people as a side dish.
Making the dow mui at home is not the problem. The problem lies in finding someone to sell you dow mui in the first place. Living close to Chinatown and having navigated it's maze of streets, vendors and smells many times, Joe and I still had trouble finding someone to sell us the greens. Asking for pea shoots didn't help us. Chinese vendors looked at us blankly or shooed us away for taking too much time away from regular customers.
After some research at home (the equivalent of asking our Chinese speaking roommate what pea shoots translated into) we went back into Chinatown determine to get at least 1lb of the sweet stalks.
Again no success. We tried pronouncing dow mui differently. Placing emphasis on different syllables and even changing the inflection. No luck. Still blank stares, but we were making progress. Store keepers understood our very poor Chinese and told us they didn't have dow mui. "No more today" and "Market too expensive" were common responses.
Then on Mulberry Street, deep in the bowels of Chinatown, we had success. "Dow Mui? Yes, we have. In the back. How much you want?" Finally. While they gathered our dow mui we started chatting with the women running the store. Apparently pea shoots are very popular and sell out quickly. Hence they are generally kept in the back and are only available to special customers on request.
At $3-6lb the shoots are considered expensive by Chinese standards. For us they are well worth it since 2lbs of dow mui will be our dinner for that night. And now we are the special customers.
Posted by dvenuto at February 08, 2003 12:47 AM