Stir-fried green soy beans with snow vegetable (xue cai mao dou)

Young green soy beans, commonly known as edamame, are one of my favourite vegetables. Small and exquisite, their colour a sweet emerald green that brightens up any supper table. You may serve them boiled, in their fuzzy pods, for the pleasure of popping them out and nibbling them with a glass of beer. Otherwise, they can be steamed or stir-fried, or used in colourful "eight treasure" stuffings. I’ve even had them, dried but still bright green, in mugs of salty green tea in rural Zhejiang province! The following dish is one that I enjoyed on a September noon in the Zhejiang hills, when my friend A Dai took me to visit an organic chicken farm. We explored the farm, where healthy looking chickens pecked around a slope stocked with bamboo, persimmon, camphor and loquat trees, then walked down to the farmhouse for lunch. This recipe, made with "snow vegetable", one of the favourite local preserves, was on the table that day and I’ve never forgotten it. You can add more or less snow vegetable as you please and you might like to pep it up with a little chilli and Sichuan pepper, to give it a Sichuanese twist. Either version is great served either hot or cold. The same method can be used to cook peas or broad beans.