Last weekend when I was at a local farmer's market, I met a lady, who is a hydroponic farmer with Rogue Farms here in Charlotte, who introduced me to pak choi, a Chinese cabbage in the same family as bok choy. After researching it, I found that they are both of the same plant, but pak choi is simply a different variety. I was there picking up fresh tuna steaks and had already bought bok choy to saute' with the tuna that night and was looking for more ideas. She had picked the pak choi young, so the leaves were small and tender, and she gave me the idea of eating it raw in a salad.

The tuna steak recipe I was using was from Tyler Florence's cookbook, "Eat This Book", and the ginger soy dressing sounded like a great dressing to also use with the salad. The dressing I ended up making was based on his recipe with a few tweaks.

Here are your salad dressing ingredients:

1/2 cup cilantro, chopped
1 jalepeno pepper, chopped
1 teaspoon fresh ginger, minced or grated
2 garlic cloves, minced
juice of 4 limes
1/4 cup low sodium soy sauce
1 cup extra virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons honey
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

Mix all ingredients in a large glass measuring cup or carafe with hand blender or in a regular blender (or whisk ingredients together for a dressing with more texture) and set aside.

For the salad, you will need:

4-5 bunches baby pak choi
3-4 cups baby kale
1/2 cup pea shoots, chopped
1/2 cup white mushrooms, sliced
4-5 scallions, finely chopped
Optional: 1 avocado, sliced

Wash and stem the pak choi and place in a large bowl, add the baby kale, pea shoots, mushrooms, scallions and avocado (if using). Lightly toss with the ginger soy dressing and serve. This was a great accompaniment to the seared tuna. I even still sauted the bok choy I had already purchased with sliced shitake mushrooms and more scallions and served this with the tuna.

Please note: If you have trouble finding pak choi or pea shoots, feel free to substitute chopped romaine or any crunchy lettuce with any other microgreens!