I cooked it, I never said I could pronounce it...

I recently started ordering one of those CSA boxes. For those of you in the UK, I'm not sure if this is an American idea, so I'll explain. CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture. An interested consumer (e.g me), can buy a membership to a local organic farm's CSA program and pick up a box of whatever is in season, being picked, etc each week. And you never know what you're going to get until you pick it up. My aim here was to branch out of our comfort zone. To be honest, I wander around the grocery department in our local supermarket, and despite my good intentions to shop seasonally and buy a large variety of different vegetables, I tend to gravitate towards what I know we like, and thus seem to eat every week. So I do like the idea of getting a box of farm fresh goodies each week, and not knowing what will be in there. Thanks to the Age of Google, you can always find something to do with them, and it forces me to be a bit creative. This week was no exception when I discovered a bunch of Mei Quin Choi in my box. Hmmmm... Don't ask me how to pronounce it, but I bought it, so by heck, I had to do something with it.

Don't get too excited, Mei Quin Choi isn't that 'off the wall'. It looked like the baby bok choy, I've seen in stores (and never bought...) and a brief search in the land of Wikipedia confirmed that it is a variant of that. So, given that I'm a baby bok choy 'virgin', I went looking for a good recipe. Seriously, I don't know what people did before google. I am not the bravest of cooks - I rarely invent a new recipe from scratch, but give me a starting point, and I'll tweak it around until it fits our palates and the ingredients we have available. And thus was born the following dish:

Sherry and Lemon Roasted Baby Bok Choy (or Mei Quin Choi)
Serves 4-6 as a side

3-4 heads of baby bok choy or mei quin choi
4 tsp canola oil/vegetable oil
1 clove garlic, minced
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp grated lemon zest
1 TBSP lemon juice
2 tsp dry sherry
pinch of golden caster sugar
1/4 tsp ground black pepper

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees F (230 degrees C).
2. Cut off the base of each bok choy head and pull the leaves apart to separate.
3. Arrange in a large baking tin.
4. Toss in the oil, salt and garlic.
5. Bake in oven for 8 minutes by which time it should be wilted and starting to brown on the edges.
6. In the meantime, whisk together the lemon zest, juice, sherry, sugar and pepper in a small bowl.
7. Pour the sherry and lemon dressing over the hot bok choy and toss to coat.