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Charred Pak Choy and Pickled Red Onions

Ingredients

  • 1 inch knob of ginger grated
  • 1/2 cup cilantro chopped
  • 2 tbsp rice vinegar
  • 1/4 cup kalamata olives roughly chopped
  • 1/2 cup peanuts toasted
  • 1 tbsp sesame oil
  • 2 tbsp olive oil
  • 1 ginormous pak choy - take the leaves off but leave the length
  • salt to taste

For the Pickled Onions

  • 1 small red onion sliced on a mandolin or VERY FINELY
  • 1/2 cup water
  • 1/2 cup white vinegar
  • 2 tbsp white sugar
  • several pinches of salt

Instructions

  1. About an hour before you want to serve this, quickly bring to a simmer the vinegar, water, sugar, and salt. Pour over the finely sliced red onion in a smallish jar and make sure the liquid completely covers them. Depending on thickness, they'll be ready to add to the salad when they are pale pink and soft, which took us just under an hour.
  2. In a large jar or tupperware, toss together the grated ginger, cilantro, rice vinegar, chopped olives, peanuts, sesame oil, and olive oil.
  3. In another large mixing bowl, toss pak choy leaves with about 2 tablespoons of oil and a few large pinches of salt. You could also use a lil silicone brush to brush each leaf with an oil and salt mixture. You do you.
  4. Preheat a grill to 400F and grill for 5-7 minutes, flipping once until charred and tender. As the leaves get cooked, you can flip them up on top of the stems which take longer. You could also roast the pak choy in the oven for 10 minutes, but you might want to chop the tops off so you can pull them out before they overbake. I will say, the grill was definitely the way to go for flavour.
  5. Let them cool a bit and chop them into bite size chunks
  6. Toss charred pak choy chunks with the dressing. We left the pickled red onion to add to taste to each serving.
  7. Hearty enough to stand on its own as a lunch, but we had ours with tofu steaks, and if you need to stretch it a bit further, you could have it over rice quite nicely I suspect.