malabar spinach| lucky duck farm | wheeler mansion market

I picked up a bunch of malabar spinach along with some Chinese cucumber at the Wheeler Mansion farmer's market in the South Loop. The vendor was Lucky Duck Farm and they had what I thought was one of the most interesting and exciting vegetable offerings I've seen this year. A small but lovingly curated selection of Asian vegetables: Malabar spinach, Japanese and Indian eggplants, Tinda squash, Japanese, Chinese, and Thai cucumbers, Chinese long beans, Japanese green onions, and Thai basil. And duck eggs!--chicken eggs, too. Last week they had a totally different offering...lemon basil, shiso, snow peas, daikon radish and bok choi.

I've never worked with malabar spinach, but it's apparently used all over South/Southeast Asia in curries and soups. Given the heat--we decided to eat it raw with a little Kewpie Deep-Roasted Sesame Dressing--delicious! A sort of raw gomae-like concoction, except the Malabar spinach in its raw state has a pleasant mucilaginous quality that really made it special, not unlike okra or natto, though less oozy.

Lucky Duck Farm @ Wheeler Mansion
2020 South Calumet
every Wednesday from 4-8

trixie-pea wrote:... a pleasant mucilaginous quality ...

Thanks, Trix, for giving me my word for the day! (bolding mine)

trixie-pea wrote:Malabar spinach in its raw state has a pleasant mucilaginous quality that really made it special

Yeah, special. When raw, I found it best to eat Malabar spinach in small mouthfuls, lest it generate too much slime. It certainly has a wonderful fresh green flavor. Makes you feel virtuous eating a bowl.

Lucky Duck and the Wheeler Mansion Market are special too. It's a great setting for a market. Most of the vendors are set up on the south lawn and in the back yard.



Lucky Duck has instantly become my favorite vegetable vendor. Every item they offer is unusual and pristine. Nice people and the prices are more than fair for such lovely produce.



From the left: Malabar spinach, three varieties of cucumber, long beans (both purple and green), Korean melon, tinda squash, shishito peppers, several kinds of eggplant, eggs (duck or chicken). They also sell pasture-raised chickens. I'll bet those are great. Wonder if they ever sell ducks…



That's the Malabar spinach, with a few warty cukes and both colors of long beans in the background. I'm not the biggest fan of mucilaginous veggies so I definitely prefer it cooked. I simmered Malabar spinach and purple long beans in some leftover Burmese soupy curry and was relieved to find it didn't exude much slime. The texture when cooked is rather kelp-like and quite appealing. That was a great bowl of curry. Tonight I'll make some sort of curry with the tinda (and probably the rest of the spinach and long beans).

For lunch I had an international cucumber sampler plate (can't remember which is which) with blanched purple long beans and some balachaung. I'll post a bit more about this Burmese chili and dried shrimp condiment later.



Lucky Duck Farm is really a treasure. Thanks to trixie-pea for bringing it to our attention.

Hi,

I received some malabar spinach from the lands beyond Illinois. I used them in this recipe for Indonesian style Malabar Spinach. I made a few departures from the recipe:
- Cooked the Malabar spinach until wilted, though it had not released any liquids.
- Used coconut milk instead of cream, though I expect the natural viscous quality of Malabar spinach lent some thickening to this dish.
- This had a sour profile, which was not all I wanted. I added some sugar to soften it a bit, though you may not find this necessary.

While I expect this is a side dish along with many others, I treated this as a soup.

Regards,