Instructions: Pea shoots, like many Asian vegetables, go by a number of names.

Some call them pea vines or pea tips because they are the tender tips of the edible pea plant - the top several leaves and the tendril that ends the vine. Pea shoots is a translation from the Chinese dou miao (Mandarin) or dau miu (Cantonese). Pronounce

"dough meow."

By all these names, they are delicate, nutty and spinach-like. But unlike spinach, they do not harbor grit, and they do not leave an astringent coating on the tongue. Also, the stems are as tender as the leaves and do not have to be removed, as spinach stems often do.

Over the last 10 years, pea shoots have appeared with increasing regularity in Bay Area Chinese restaurants, but they are not often listed on the English menu. One has to ask for them, or be able to read Chinese. For this reason, I think it best to refer to them as dou miao because thats the name that will get results. Asking for pea vines is very likely to result in quizzical looks.

In Chinese restaurants, dou miao are usually sauteed quickly with garlic; sometimes they appear in soup. Some say they are best sauteed in lard. I have no doubt this is true, though I have never asked any restaurant what fat it uses. I eat whatever oil comes in the dish, no complaints.

In one of my early encounters with dou miao, I went to a restaurant in Manhattans Chinatown with a Chinese-American friend and her aunt. My friends aunt ordered a flurry of dishes, including sauteed dou miao, which was on the special Chinese-language menu. Our enormous, busy meal attracted the attention of the next table, which had no Asians. They wanted to know what that green vegetable was. We recommended it highly; they practiced saying dou miao

(dough meow). They got spinach. Hopefully this was a rare incident. But if you order dou miao and get something that tastes suspiciously familiar, its worth raising the issue with the restaurant, both to curb such practices and to taste the real thing.

Or you can try dou miao at home. Fresh pea tips are available in several local Chinese grocery stores. They cost $3 to $4 a pound and are available most of the year - somewhat less in the winter, when its difficult to keep pea plants happy. The stems are branching and hollow all the way up to the curly tendrils. The oval leaves are bright green, slightly larger than silver dollars, and grow in pairs every inch or two up the stems. It is normal for the leaves to have a powdery blush.

When they first arrived in stores several years ago, dou miao were often pre-packed in plastic bags. Now they sell well enough that most stores keep them in loose piles. This is the better way to buy, since you can choose only the handfuls that look good to you. As with any green vegetable, the leaves should be green and unwilted. Dou miao are usually very clean, since they come from the top of the plant, away from dirt. They do occasionally shelter a few bugs. I am no insect lover, but I take their presence as a sign that the produce is very fresh. Dou miao keep well in the refrigerator if packed closely, but not crushingly tight, in a plastic bag. They are best used within a few days. I have, however, kept them this way for up to two weeks.

Dou miaos popularity in the Asian community has spawned a variation. Instead of waiting for pea plants to reach adulthood, some growers harvest young plants whole when they have about six leaves. The young sprouts are cheaper than shoots, sometimes as little as 99 cents a pound. Their leaves are dime-sized and blush-less, and the stems pale, straight, skinny and solid. They tend to be less buggy than large dou miao, and also very clean, even though they grow low to the ground (sometimes a sprout will come with the seed still attached). This is because they are grown either hydroponically or indoors, where the rain cannot splash dirt on them.

Although the two types of dou miao can be used interchangeably, they are not exactly the same. Shoots from mature plants are sweeter and softer when cooked, and have a higher proportion of leaf to stem. A plateful of sauteed shoots is uniformly dark green, whereas sauteed sprouts look like spinach mixed with a lot of lime-green spaghetti bits. Raw sprouts, on the other hand, make better salads; they are crisper and taste like fresh peas, and their daintiness makes them pretty as well as tasty. Also, they are more likely to be available when large ones are not because young plants are easier to nurture in greenhouses year-round.

In Chinese, the two types are distinguished by calling them large and small: da dou miao and shao dou miao. Da dou miao, the large shoots, are also sometimes called wan, (late) because they come from the mature pea plant.

This linguistic tidbit is not important in the grocery store because you can easily see the difference between the large shoots and the small sprouts. But in a restaurant, you might want to ask if the dish is made with large or small dou miao, for two reasons:
To ensure you get the type you want in the dish you want - in stir-fries, da dou miao are more tender; in soup, both are fine; in salads, shao dou miao have the better flavor.

To know what you are getting for your money - large dou miao are much more expensive, as raw ingredients, than the small ones, but this difference is not always reflected in the menu price.

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