Why Chives?
Chives grow easily, are perennial and smell lovely. As a kid growing up in Malaysia, I experienced chives more often as its own vegetable dish instead of a garnish. That's because chives are already worthy enough to be the star of any good dish.
Which Chives To Use
The chives I am talking about are Chinese Chives (aka Asian Chives aka Garlic Chives). Asian supermarkets may label them as gau choy/kow chai.
Preparing chives is a no-brainer. You'll find several Chinese-style stir-fry recipes online. But I'm choosing the simpler route because all I want to show you is that chives can be enjoyed as a legit vegetable dish.
One could add in prawns or stir fried beef to the chives. In such a case, you'd have a well-balanced dish. But since my aim here is simple, so is my garlic chive dish (no additional meat here).
Ingredients You'll Need:
Red Chili Slices
Garlic Cloves
Soy & Fish Sauce Mixture (could use oyster sauce to replace fish sauce)
Brown Sugar (optional)
Oil
Chives
The Simple Guide: How to Prepare Chives
Step One:
The first step is to cut off the inedible bottom end of the chives. You can actually cut the ends of the whole stalk of chives together in a slight back and forth motion.
Step Two:
Then, wash them
Step Three:
Heat a little bit of oil in a pan or wok and when the oil is hot, throw in the garlic cloves and red chili.
Step Four:
Once these turn brown, it's the garlic chives' turn to go inside. Do not overcook - around 1 minute should be fine. Towards the end of the one minute, pour in the sauce mixture that had been made earlier. Let the dark sauce simmer a little as the chives wait at the side
That's it!
Serve with rice.
Or on rice?