Ginger Kale With Lobster Sauce

Author Notes

Note on the lobster sauce: this is a sauce that traditionally used to be served with lobster, hence the name, but it became quite popular in the US within Chinese-American cooking. Lobster sauce doesn't have any lobster in it; it’s just a thickened stock with egg white drop. It just so happens that this sauce does well with heartier, slightly heavier greens. So, this dish is kale with a lobster “sauce”. Some places on the west coast might call this a white sauce, but in Chinese or Cantonese cooking we just refer to it as a thickened stock.

Here, I’m using Tuscan kale—I recommend taking most of the stem off of your greens, just because the inside can be very tough. If you’re using curly kale, the inside tends to be even thicker. Which is to say, even more unpleasant. Other greens I might recommend for this are collard greens; or anything that can take on a little bit of liquid. Not a leafy green, but celery is actually very good with this sauce as well, and also broccoli. You see what I’m going for: heartier, thicker greens. Even gai lan, which is Chinese broccoli, would be great here. When cooking, keep the woodier, “stemmier” parts of the green away from the leaves, that way you can put the tougher parts in first to steam and cook.

The way egg drops work, is when the egg hits the hot water, the proteins denature really quickly to form little shreds, which means that if you speed up or thin out the pour of egg white into the water, you can create smaller strands. In Chinese cooking, we like to differentiate between making longer, blanketing pieces of egg drop versus small little swirls, depending on what texture you want. Here, we're aiming for something in between. To make that, I’m using some water and sesame oil to thin it out, but also add some fat back.
—Lucas Sin