Grow Spring Onions in a Jar

Bring the spring in, I say, bring it in!  We've been experimenting with spring onions 珠蔥 also known as green onions or scallions, trying to find a way to have this essential to Chinese cuisine flavoring unit at hand whenever we need it.  

I don't know if it's just my luck but, really, almost every time I need spring onions, all the stores are out of it!  And if you cook Chinese food, you know as I know that you will always need some spring onion for your dinner dishes, be it a sprinkled garnish, a way to aromatize your oil, or even as the tasty vegetable portion of your stir fry.  

Which is why, here in Hong Kong, I have never understood why it is so hard to buy spring onion after a certain time of the day.  A shake of the head, a shrug of the shoulders...sorry, no spring onions.  Urghh...how devastating to that delectable dish that you have in mind for dinner!  

Recently we have discovered a way to easily insure ourselves against the abyss that is the lack of spring onion:  we have been growing our own spring onions in a jar!

Stir Fry Crabs with Ginger and Scallions 姜葱蟹

This is the best crab dish.  Bar none.  Even better than the popular curry crab dishes that abound (which I think are overrated anyways).  Just fresh crab, ginger and scallions.  A simple trinity of three foods to create an absolute.  Absolute of taste, that is.  Simplicity and decadence on the same white plate.

For this Stir Fry Crab with Ginger and Scallion, or 姜葱蟹, we picked up from the wet market a mud crab which is a more meaty crab.  But any crab will do for this dish as long as it is fresh. And there are all kinds of crabs, an abundance of choice really, at the wet markets in Hong Kong.  

Ah, to live by the sea!  What a dream come true.  Of sorts anyways.  We have all the seafood we can possibly cook and eat but are stuffed like sardines into shoebox sized homes piled in towering, untidy heaps along a polluted harbor.  Sigh...