Mushroom San Choy Bow
This recipe is a staple for me – whenever I see some really good looking exotic mushrooms they go into my trolley, and making Mushroom San Choy Bow is one of my favourite ways to use them. But it’s great even with regular mushrooms. After you’ve cut all the mushrooms up it’s pretty quick and easy to make, and the ratios of the ingredients can be flexible, I don’t measure precisely when making this – a splash here and there of the various sauces and balance to taste.
Mushrooms are so good for you!
Mushrooms are a very healthy food – they are good for your brain health, good for your immune system and they’re a prebiotic, so they feed your good gut bugs.
Learn more about medicinal mushrooms here – Medicinal Mushrooms Podcast
There is a lot of naturally occuring sulphur in this dish with the onions, cabbage, leek and garlic, so it’s also very good for your liver, hormonal detoxification and your skin.
Don’t want a vegetarian san choy bow? Fodmap issues? Check my options at the bottom of the recipe.
The Recipe
Ingredients:
- 1 red onion, diced
- 1 tsp ginger, finely grated
- Half leek – halved vertically and washed, then thinly sliced
- 1/2 cup shredded green cabbage
- 1 full bag paper mushrooms, or equivalent quantity of mixed mushrooms (I use mostly button mushrooms, and add shiitake, king oyster and enoki mushrooms)
- 2 garlic cloves
- 1 tbsp soy
- Splash fish sauce (omit if vegan)
- 1 tsp mirin
- Splash rice wine vinegar
- 1/4 lime, juiced
- Small pinch of salt
- 1/4 cauliflower, very finely chopped/shredded
- 1-2 green onions
- 1 Iceberg or cos lettuce (see step 5 – you may want to do this in advance if you’re not confident).
Method
- Heat some olive oil in a large fry pan on medium heat and sautee the red onion until soft. Add the leek and continue to fry for a further minute.
- Add the mushrooms and cook until soft.
- Add the cauliflower, cabbage, ginger and salt and cook until it’s all adequately softened, then add the sauces. Balance to taste.
- Dice up the spring onions and stir most of them through, reserving a little to garnish with.
- Take the iceberg lettuce apart into leaves (allow some time for this a it can be fiddly, you want to avoid tearing the leaves). Wash and dry them, then assemble on a plate.
- Put the mushroom mixture into a bowl, sprinkle with the remaining spring onions or some sesame seeds, I also like to drizzle a little sesame oil over the top.
- Now you can eat it – take a lettuce leaf, place a couple of spoonfuls of mushroom mixture into the lettuce, wrap up the lettuce so you can hold onto it and take a bite.
Tweak it.
Add some unflavoured medicinal mushroom powder into this mix before you serve it for some extra oomph! I like to use Lion’s Mane, or a blend of Reishi, Cordyceps, Shiitake, and a few others.
Not keen on a vegetarian dinner? Use pork or beef mince to replace 1/3-3/4 of the mushrooms. Sautee the mince off after the red onion, then proceed with the rest of the steps.
If you’re fodmap sensitive this recipe may give you some gas so you may choose to swap the mushrooms for pork or beef mince, skip the red onion and use the green part of the leek and spring onions only. You can probably handle some mushrooms, but maybe not this much.
