Bok choy, Chinese long beans, daikon, gailon, hairy melon, sugar peas, Thai pepper–these are some of the Asian specialty vegetables increasingly noticeable in American supermarkets.
Most of the vegetables are grown by ethnic Asian farmers. According to the United States Department of Agriculture, Asian-Americans operate over ten thousand farms nationwide.
Those farmers are largely political refugees who fled the Communists in Southeast Asia after the end of the Vietnam War in 1975. Thousands of the refugees from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos were farmers who settled in California’s Central Valley, especially Fresno County, because of the rich farmland there. Other refugees moved farther inland and set up Asian farm communities throughout the rest of the United States.
At first they grew Asian vegetables mainly for their own families. Eventually, however, they planted larger and larger crops for selling. Some of the Asians had brought with them from their old homelands their families’ private seed collections, with which the farmers, in their new homeland, constantly developed new varieties of Asian vegetables.
Asian-American farmers have long sold their produce at farmers markets and at Asian specialty grocery stores. But recent years have seen an explosive interest in Asian vegetables among the general population, partly because of the broad impact of multiculturalism throughout American society, including its culinary tastes, and partly because of the spreading knowledge of the health benefits of Asian vegetables.
Some authorities have categorized popular Asian vegetables into five main families: crucifer, cucurbit, legume, monocot, and solanum. Common names and spellings of the vegetables vary widely, depending on the growers’ ethnic groups and areas of production.
The crucifer family consists of cabbage and related types of vegetables. Chinese cabbage is either of two plants: bok choy or celery cabbage (most often, this is the vegetable referred to by the term Chinese cabbage). Daikon is a large white radish, while gailon is a Chinese kind of broccoli.
The cucurbit family consists of gourds. Bittermelon looks like a warty zucchini. Hairy melon (moqua) is a squash covered with very fine hairs. Other gourds include opo, snake gourd, loofa (sinqua), and Chinese winter melon (donqua).
The legume family includes Chinese long beans, which grow up to three feet in length. Among the other legumes are hyacinth beans and sugar peas, the latter being essential ingredients in Oriental cuisine.
The monocot (or monocotyledon) family consists of grasses, sedges, and related plants. Lemongrass emits a strong citrus aroma. Water chestnut grows below ground under several inches of standing water. Taro is grown primarily for its root, the main ingredient in poi.
The solanum family includes many kinds of Oriental eggplants: Chinese (a long, narrow vegetable with a beautiful lavendar color), Japanese, Hmong, Thai, and others. Another solanum is the hot Thai pepper.
Like other vegetables, Asian varieties have many healthful benefits. As a group, they are low in fat and calories, and high in fiber, potassium, vitamin C, and folate.
A prime example is bok choy. A half-cup serving of raw bok choy has 16 milligrams of vitamin C, 27 percent of the recommended Daily Value (DV). The same serving also supplies 9 percent of the DV of folate, which the human body uses for normal tissue growth and for protection against cancer and heart disease. Bok choy is one of nature’s best suppliers of beta-carotene, a nutrient that most cabbages do not have in abundance. Beta-carotene is an antioxidant that helps prevent heart attacks and certain types of cancer.
Displaced by war, Asian farmers came to the United States and received the blessings of land, life, and liberty. In return, they have enriched the healthful food options for all Americans.
(Principal source: Richard Molinar and Michael Yang, “Guide to Asian Specialty Vegetables in the Central Valley, CA,” http://www.sfc.ucdavis.edu/AsianVeg/asian_veg.htm)
