Chinese water spinach

[Randy W]

We have a restaurant here in Yulin that serves ONLY tripe and Chinese water spinach, or 蕹菜, pronounced ong choy in Cantonese. 蕹菜 is Wèng cài in Mandarin, or Ipomoea in English.

 

Morning glories are a major weed problem in New Mexico, Arizona, and in the San Joaquin Valley of California, where several species of Ipomoea are found

from Goldthread

 

In Chinese, water spinach is ‘empty heart vegetable.’ Here’s the story behind the name.

 

Chinese water spinach stir-fried with chili and shrimp paste. (Yes, that is a plate shaped like a shovel.) / Photo: Xiaomei Chen/SCMP

 

Chinese water spinach, sometimes called morning glory, is used in all sorts of dishes across Asia. But in the West, it’s considered a weed.

 

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A long, crunchy vegetable with a hollow stem, it’s usually served as a side dish, draped with a blanket of minced garlic, water, a pinch of salt, and a touch of umami (usually from MSG).

 

In Southeast Asia, where the vegetable is most prevalent, the simple garlic and water slurry is elevated with chili, shrimp paste, and fermented bean sauce.

 

Despite its name, Chinese water spinach is not actually a spinach. It’s not even in the same plant family, and the misnomer might be the fault of grocers, who tend to assign the word to anything miscellaneously leafy and green.

 

The Chinese water spinach, or Ipomoea aquatica, is part of the morning glory genus, called so because of their trumpet-shaped flowers that peak at full bloom in the morning.

 

I know water spinach by the Chinese name kongxincai 空心菜, which literally means “empty heart vegetable.”

 

The poetic moniker comes from a 16th-century fable about a government minister who is forced to gouge out his heart after one of the king’s wives tires of his advice. His tomb notably had just one single plant growing: the kongxincai, or empty heart vegetable.