CSA Time - what to do with loads of Bok Choi?

This past week our CSA began and we got TONS of veggies - I mean, look at them all!  I was having trouble deciding where to start and what to do.

Fridge Full!

I pulled out a a couple things I thought would go together - 2 bags of peas and a whole lot of bok choi, plugged them into Epicurious and got back a bunch of results.  The one that peeked my interest was an Asian Chicken Salad with Snap Peas and Bok Choy, so I used that as a starting point. 

Yummy!

The Necessities (according to Epicurious - see lots of changes)

• 2 skinless boneless chicken breast halves (about 1 pound)
• 5 fresh cilantro sprigs plus 1/3 cup chopped cilantro - forgot to buy this, so no cilantro
• 1 whole green onion plus 2 green onions, chopped
• 1 8-ounce package sugar snap peas - used double this!
• 3 baby bok choy, thinly sliced crosswise - used about 4x this - I had so much bok choi!
• 1 English hothouse cucumber, quartered lengthwise, thinly sliced crosswise
• 1 red jalapeño chile, thinly sliced
• 1/4 cup ponzu - market did not have this so I decided lemon juice would suffice
• 2 1/2 tablespoons seasoned rice vinegar
• 2 1/2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 1 tablespoon minced peeled fresh ginger

The Ingredients

To get started I filled my pan with enough water to submerge the chicken and added some salt and a large green onion.  Since I forgot my cilantro Nick suggested I add coriander.  Turns out that they come from they same plant - the seeds are coriander, the leaves are cilantro!  Go figure!

Poaching chicken

While the chicken was poaching, I chopped up the cucumber, my giant green onion, the chili pepper and clipped the ends of the peas so they were ready to go.

Chopped Veggies

Then I added them to the big serving bowl.

Once the chicken was done, Nick shred it all up and I added the peas to the pan with the water, onion and coriander.  I allowed them to cook for about a minute and added both of those to the same bowl.

Almost ready

The recipe called for only a few leaves of bok choi and it was supposed to be added with the other raw, cold ingredients.  However, I had so much, it really would have been too overwhelming.  Instead, I decided to empty the pan of the water and added a bit of olive oil and cooked down the massive amount of bok choi.

Cooking it down...

Once that was complete, I added the cooked greens to the bowl with the rest of the ingredients.  For the sauce, I combined the rice vinegar, a couple of tablespoons of vegetable oil and a tablespoon of minced fresh ginger.  Now, the recipe did call for ponzu, but that was not available at my local store, so seeing that it was a citrus based condiment I decided to just juice a lemon into the sauce.  After it was mixed up I poured it over the ingredients and gave everything one final toss.

All tossed together

To serve, I just put a bit of rice in a bowl and added a whole lot of the Asian salad over the top.  Overall, I really enjoyed this salad.  It combined a lot of different veggies with some Asian's flavors.  Really, you can modify this recipe to fit any of your needs, like when you have more bok choi than you know what to do with!  This was a great weekday meal.  For me, I really needed help in coming up with a homemade sauce, so I liked where the recipe took me.  It all just came together really well!