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I bought this leafy green at H-Mart, a Korean supermarket. It was labelled "Monchoy", but I can't find anything online for that term! Both raw and sautéed, it has a slimy texture reminiscent of okra, and I'd like to figure out how it's typically cooked. What is this vegetable usually called, and what part of the world does it come from?

photo of leafy green

perigon
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3 Answers3

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Although it's hard to say without seeing the stalks, your description of the flavor and texture is consistent with Malabar Spinach, also called Wood Ear. It's used in a variety of Asian and African cuisines.

GdD
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    Yes, it's called "Montoi" in Vietnamese, and in Asia it's known as Vietnamese Spinach. Are you sure that it's called Wood Ear, though? I thought that was a mushroom. – FuzzyChef Apr 07 '23 at 00:43
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    @FuzzyChef [This page](https://www.eugenethepanda.com/2020/07/18/malabar-spinach-%E6%9C%A8%E8%80%B3%E8%8F%9C/) claims that "wood ear vegetable" is the word-for-word translation of the green's name in Chinese. – A_S00 Apr 07 '23 at 02:10
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    @A_S00: That makes sense, but the “vegetable” is crucial. “Oyster mushrooms” shouldn’t be confused with “oysters”; “wood ear vegetable” is not “wood ear”. A slightly more idiomatic, but still fairly literal, translation might be “vegetable wood ear” or “wood ear greens”, since we don’t usually use “X vegetable” as the name of types of vegetable in English. – PLL Apr 07 '23 at 13:33
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    it's never, ever, called "wood ear" and I suggest just removing that from the otherwise excellent answer. A_SOO ... "word for word" translations mean nothing. It's never called "wood ear" – Fattie Apr 08 '23 at 06:27
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    Note: botanically, it is not in the same plant family as [spinach](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinach) although it looks very similar. – Wastrel Apr 08 '23 at 15:45
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    Note that if you do not qualify 'wood ear' with 'vegetable' you will get these: https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%BB%91%E6%9C%A8%E8%80%B3 , so I agree that the aside should be removed from the answer. – Cong Chen Apr 08 '23 at 20:29
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    The name ‘wood-ear greens’ is indeed a verbatim translation from Chinese 木耳菜 _mù ěr cài_, though that’s not the primary name in Standard Mandarin (going by [Wiktionary’s overview of dialectal synonyms](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/落葵), it’s used in a ‘belt’ stretching from around Shanghai through Anhui, Jiangxi, Hunan and Guizhou). The name 木耳菜 is based on the mushroom (木耳), but I’ve never seen it used in English either. Never seen or heard ‘monchoy’ either. It looks like someone took the Vietnamese name, [mồng tơi](https://vi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mồng_tơi) and tried to turn it into Cantonese. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Apr 09 '23 at 12:15
  • Weird. Google Translate has *no concept of* 木耳菜 and seems to treat it as if the 菜 part didn't exist. DeepL thinks it means [this plant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mucuna_pruriens). And yet any search engine's image search will correctly identify it, including Google. If I start from Vietnamese, I can only get ordinary "spinach" as a translation, but search engines can still find the thing. I can't find any evidence of Korean having any native word for this thing, which might explain the signage, @JanusBahsJacquet. It seems plausible the Chinese was chosen for phonetic reasons, too. – Karl Knechtel Apr 09 '23 at 14:32
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    @KarlKnechtel Given that 木耳菜 is a dialectal word, it’s not that surprising that Google Translate can’t suss it out. It’s more surprising that it doesn’t even understand 木耳 (which it just translates to ‘fungus’, far too broad) or indeed the more standard term for Malabar spinach, 落葵 (which it translates verbatim, as ‘falling sunflower’). This could be the beginning of Cooking.SE’s very own [Swedish axe mystery](https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/395382)! – Janus Bahs Jacquet Apr 09 '23 at 18:35
  • @Fattie, I saw it called that in a local Asian supermarket, so someone calls it that. – GdD Apr 13 '23 at 07:52
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It's called Malabar spinach,my family grows this kind of vegetable in china.

杨荣东
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It's definitely of the spinach family. I put spinach in my spaghetti bolognese for years so I know it well.

turtledna
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  • This doesn't really add anything given the previous answers. – Karl Knechtel Apr 09 '23 at 14:34
  • That’s probably at least partially incorrect. Malabar spinach (as identified by the other posters) is _Basella alba_, while spinach is _Spinacia oleracea_. They are not in the same family. Wikipedia has a [nice overview](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinach_(disambiguation)) of plants that are called spinach. – Stephie Apr 10 '23 at 21:39