Salad days and cold cuts

A diet rich in fresh vegetables is good for your waistline, particularly after a week of festivities. Tuweimei

Compared to most Western chefs, Chinese ones serve up more vegetables, barring the strictly vegetarian cook. Greens appear on the Chinese table in many ways, both cooked and uncooked.

This was brought home repeatedly during the recent round of feasting that usually accompanies the reunion of family and friends this time of year. My husband and I dined with relatives we haven't seen for years, and caught up with old colleagues home from various journalistic postings around the world. As usual, in China, most of these reunions were centered on food.

As we tried out new restaurants and revisited old favorites, I marveled at the presentation and choice of salad appetizers that are appearing.

I was especially taken with the increasing variety of raw vegetables: tiny toon shoots lightly tossed with blanched walnuts and other microgreens, shaved fennel bulb in a salad with carrot slivers and lily bulbs, red and orange sweet cherry tomatoes piled high on their own and the old Beijing classic - crisp green cucumbers lightly smashed and dressed with nothing more than a drizzle of vinegar and a scatter of minced garlic.

The microgreens, especially, are certainly a new market revolution and all China's own. While the first red buds of the toon tree have always been eaten and enjoyed, the latest salad trend is to germinate tiny shoots from seeds and eat them when the first cotyledons are barely formed.

These miniature alfalfa-like shoots are delicious and only lightly scented with the unique fragrance of toon, which can be otherwise overpowering for the uninitiated.

Another popular microgreen appearing in salad appetizers is celery shoots, which bears no resemblance to the hardy stalks they will become in maturity and are truly delicate both in appearance and taste.

And while Beijingers eat fennel tops quite regularly, usually minced and added to dumpling fillings more as a vegetable than a herb, it is only this time around that I have actually seen the juicy crisp fennel bulbs served at table. At home, I like eating fennel bulbs roasted, lightly grilled or caramelised in the pan.

A visit to Chongwenmen's fresh market confirmed the popularity of both microgreens and fennel bulb. In fact, the little toon shoots were all gone, and my friendly organic vegetable stall-owner told me she had sold out her two trays full before 9 in the morning.

I had better luck with a lovely fat fennel bulb and we took it home along with a shopping bag full of cold cuts and a stack of green cucumbers so fresh they still had their blossom ends fully attached. The faint scent of cucumber accompanied us all the way home.

My husband is a light meat eater, preferring to indulge only rarely and with a firm eye on his cholesterol count. However, there are a few childhood foods he cannot resist in Beijing and they all come from the smallgoods section - Beijing smoked chicken and a preserved pressed meat that comes encased in a "little stomach" or xiaodu.

The xiaodu's traditional packaging resembles Scottish haggis, and probably uses the same sheep's stomach but without the black pudding or oats. Instead, it slices open like circles of pressed smoked ham or Canadian bacon.

Head cheese, brawn, pork aspic, smoked fish, smoked duck's breast, trotters and ears stewed in soy sauce and spices, pickled chicken feet are some of the other cold cuts that tempt. And while much will be said about how the Chinese eat anything and everything, I must say that I have seen very similar products at Italian and English deli counters.

Nonetheless, let's get down to some light eating and here's a trio of salads to get you back to the habit of staying healthy and wealthy in the coming year.