Choy fat is a blue-green seaweed used in Chinese cooking, resembling black hair and grown on land in the Gobi Desert. It is associated with good luck and eaten during Chinese New Year. The indiscriminate harvesting of it has resulted in land becoming deserts. Adulterated versions can be identified by their black color and disintegration when simmered in water.
Choy fat is a blue-green seaweed that looks like black hair and is used as an ingredient in Chinese cooking. Also known as Nostoc flagelliforme, this unicellular algae is a type of photosynthetic bacterium that grows on land. It mainly grows on the soils of the Gobi Desert in the Qinghai Plateau, but can also be found in the arid regions of other countries. It resembles steel wool in appearance and is associated with good luck in Chinese culture because it looks quite similar to a form of greeting wishing the other greater prosperity. Consequently, it is eaten in large quantities during the Chinese New Year.
It is traditional to wish friends and family “Gung Hei Fat Choy” in the New Year, which roughly translates as “strike a fortune”. This has contributed to its popularity in Chinese cooking, although its nutritional value remains uncertain. Used in many dishes as an alternative to noodles, fatty choy needs to soak for quite a while before it can be cooked. Once soaked, it acquires the consistency of very fine vermicelli and absorbs the flavors of the liquid in which it is cooked. When stored in an airtight package, it remains edible for up to a year.
This cyanobacterium occurs in its natural environment as gelatinous colonies and grows very slowly. It forms an opaque growth on topsoil and is critical to the health of the grasslands and drylands it inhabits because it protects them from erosion. It is one of the oldest single-celled life forms and releases oxygen into its surroundings. Containing numerous filaments covered by sheaths that help retain water and keep it hydrated, this bacterium has adapted to thrive in the most inhospitable environments with very little water.
Indiscriminate harvesting of these terrestrial algae has resulted in vast tracts of land becoming deserts. Severely damaged soil takes about two to three years to recover because the harvesting process destroys all surface vegetation. Some countries have taken great steps to limit the harvest, which has raised its price and made it a valuable commodity on the black market. The Chinese government banned the collection, processing and sale of fat grease in 2000. It is still sold in shops in Taiwan, Hong Kong and other places overseas.
Difficult to obtain material, some sellers adulterate it with threads of other starches. Original fatty choy is dark green in color; adulterated strands, however, appear blacker. One way to determine the quality of the product is to simmer it in water. While the real thing withstands more than half an hour of simmering in water, the adulterated fatty fat disintegrates quickly. The adulterated threads also turn black when treated with iodine and can be identified as fake quite quickly under a microscope.
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