Hi,

It’s been so warm until yesterday, but after the rain, it got a bit chilly.

But I guess spring is going to be finished very soon here in Beijing.

I like shopping in the super-market or local market when the season is changing because I can find new seasonal vegetables I’ve never seen or tried.

There have been some vegetables in the corner of a supermarket I often go to, for a while, with shiny young green leaves, deep purple leaves that would obviously taste a little bit bitter like other spring sprouts vegetables.

This really looks like spring sprouts vegetable.

And I’ve never seen this in a supermarket in Japan.

I didn’t buy it the first day because I didn’t know how to cook it, but my curiosity brought me to buy it today.

It’s only 8RMB. (=153 JPY. Oh but now JPY is so cheap!)

When I opened the package, I found there were a lot more sprouts than I thought.

And it looks like spring!

I googled the vegetable’s name on the sticker, ‘Xiangchun 香椿’. It means fragrant camellia. Pretty name.

‘Xiangchun is a food which tells you spring has come to Northern China.’ I see.

(I checked this page, thank you very much. It’s a very nice blog with so much info about restaurants in Beijing. It’s all written in Japanese.)

’The color would turn into bright green if you boil it in hot water.’

Ok. it sounds similar to a vegetable I’ve tried to cook and FAILED before.

(Before I cooked brassica campestris, 红菜苔（hongcaitai）without boiling it in hot water beforehand and the food turned into a weird purple color and tasted very nasty bitter…)

I learned from that experience that I should boil some spring vegetables before I use them for cooking to avoid having too much bitterness.)

After boiling in water, it turned into light green like tea leaves.

And then, I pan fried the vegetables with tofu, sesame oil and salt.

Simple.

Ohhh, it taste like spring!

It’s like spring vegetables from the mountain. I feel deep taste.

And well, it still has some nasty taste. I could soak the vegetable in cold water more after I boiled it.

But ok, I could feel spring has come with this food!

My husband also ate a lot of it without any bad comment. Good.

It’s fun to try new seasonal ingredients I’ve never tried~.