Bok Choi and Brazil Nut Butter

Bok choi and Brazil nut butter, or "no ants, different log," is a weird snack, but a good one.

My inspiration to pair a brassica with a nut butter came from Michael Ruhlman, who confessed to eating something equally bizarre: cabbage and peanut butter sandwiches, for lunch, all the time.

Just seeing the photo of his sandwich, and I strongly recommend doing so here, caused me to rethink food more than any spherification or foam could.

I like bok choi. I like nut butters. Though they're rarely paired together (besides in a stir fry with peanut sauce - but do people even say "stir fry" anymore?), the flavors are not antagonist. If you're hesitant to try it yourself than you'll be all the more surprised at how pleasant the combo is.

The bok choi is light, wet, cool, and crispy. The nut butter thick, dry, and salty. The bok choi counteracts that infamous nut-butter-pasty-mouth-syndrome so well that you won't even find yourself wanting to wash it down.

Why bok choi and Brazil nut butter instead of cabbage and peanuter butter, as Mr. MR suggested? No other reason than the fact that I've been on a huge bok choi kick - raw, only - and will buy Whole Foods in-house bulk b.n.b anytime I find myself near or in the store. I always prefer an independent coop or farmers market over the creepily pleasant, dubiously ecological megachain, but they do have their strengths.

I eat it as a snack, but I suppose it could also make for a conversation-starting starter to a meal.

Try it, you'll like it.

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Recipe: Bok Choi and Brazil Nut Butter (or B.C. n' B.N.B.)

2 bok choi stalks
4 tbsp Brazil (or other) nut butter
1 pinch daring-do

1. Thoroughly rinse and rub two bok choi stalks free of debris, acknowledging the cruel trick of fate that the base of the stems always have dirt and sometimes have natural freckling that looks exactly like dirt.

2. Trim all but a suggestion of the greens from two stalks of bok choi. Eat them later, or if you're me, feed them to your strange dog who loves bok choi.

3. Schmear the hollows of the stalks with nut butter.


4. Congratulate yourself for having now become a molecular gastronomist.