Napa cabbage and shrimp

Napa cabbage is ace. You should buy some.

Cooked very briefly, it goes with quite a lot of things. The white part at the bottom of the stalk is tender. When cooked for one minute, and you bite into it, the white breaks open and spills water into your mouth. They are very watery. Much more tender than ordinary green or purple cabbage.

I make this better than all the videos about this on YouTube.

No brag. Just fact.

The volume he made would be a light snack.

The real volume for one serving would be at least 1/4 of a large napa cabbage.

A serving for two people will take the largest pan that you own.

The cabbage will fill the pan way over the top and shrink down as it steams.

It steams in one minute.

This whole thing is fast.

Very fast.

What makes my version so great that I must brag relate facts about it?

The combination of standard sauces that I use in tiny amounts, just one teaspoon, or one tablespoon, combined are too strong to sip, but when they are dumped all at once and create a cloud of steam and cook the chopped napa cabbage in an instant, and cook the shrimp pieces all at once, cause the napa cabbage to weep its liquid and combine so you end up with, say, 6X more liquid than you started with and it is so delicious you cannot resist sipping it as soup, at the end when all the cabbage is gone.

You can change the amounts and leave one or two things out and it is always, always, always delicious. And you're sad when you're finished and full. That moment is like being in heaven and being recalled back to earth. You're all, "What? What? N-O-O-O-o-o-o-o-o-o."

* Fish sauce --1 teaspoon
* Mirin -- 1 tablespoon
* Sake -- 1 tablespoon
* Toasted sesame seed oil -- 1 teaspoon
* Soy Sauce -- 3 tablespoons.
     * this counts for salt
** Sugar -- 1 tablespoon          
** Rice vinegar -- 1 tablespoon
    ** sweet and sour right there

It's like Thai cooking, the flavors are all over the place having a party in your mouth. Every taste sensation is triggered.

Have as much shrimp you want to eat. Have it ready cut up into small pieces so it's distributed throughout.

Have the napa cabbage cut up into bite-size pieces. The moment it all wilts then the whole thing is done. So you dump it in and turn it around immediately so the bulk is all heated at once. The moment the liquid hits the hot pan then the steam cooks everything at once, but the stuff at the bottom is hit hardest.

The aim is to remove it before it's actually totally wilted.

I like to add the thick white cabbage bottoms first then add the more tender light green upper portion last. This is done in handfuls with only seconds between them.

If you go over two minutes then you're cooking too long.

The shrimp will be pink.

You can include whatever you like; garlic, onions, mushroom, miso, tofu, dashi, carrots, celery, cucumber, kale, spinach, apples, whatever.

Japanese napa cabbage operation.