Stir Fried Water Spinach (Kangkong Goreng)

This morning, I bought a bundle of water spinach (or Kangkong as Malaysian called it). It is an essential dish, both in homestyle cooking and at restaurants. Water spinach is a very common vegetable in Malaysia, as well as other South East Asian countries. It's usually cook with hot chilli pepper and shrimp paste. However, you can just cook it with just garlic or onions (depend on your taste).

It's simple to cook, just basically get all the leaves and the young stems. The older stems, can be planted and it grows very easy. I am going to plant all the stems from this, so that can have plenty of it during this spring through autumn.

Directions

1. Smash the garlic and remove the skin or slice onions. Set aside.
2. Prepare the vegetable by breaking off the leaves at the base, and then breaking the stems with your hands at about 1.5″ intervals. Leave the top last part of stem intact with the top 2 leaves on. Wash the water spinach and shake it dry.
3. Heat your pan on medium high and add the oil till it's hot.
4. Throw the garlic or onions in, stir quickly until it just starts to turn light brown. If your pan is hot enough, this should be less than 10 seconds. Then throw the vegetable in with the chilies. It should sizzle like crazy. Flip the vegetables and spread out a few times to make sure they evenly cook. Then add the water, bean sauce & oyster sauce, and stir for maybe 1 more minute, until the vegetable is finished. They’re done when the leaves are dark green and wilted and the stem is medium green. Don’t overcook, or they’ll taste bad.

This is half of the bundle of the water spinach I cooked and finished it all for my lunch. Don't want to keep it in the fridge.

Cooking Method.
1) Take all the leaves and young stalk (stems) and wash it.
2) Just few slices of onions.
3) 1 can of spicy shrimp paste (or shrimp paste and chilli peppers)
4) 1 or 2 tablespoon of olive oil or vegetable oil.
5) Heat oil, saute the onions till soft or light brown. Then add the spinach leaves.. stir till it's shrink in the skillet or woke. Then add the spicy shrimp paste and stir till well-cooked. (Till the leaves look darked green).