Saturday 18 June 2016

Ipomoea aquatica

Ipomoea aquatica is a semiaquatic, tropical plant grown as a vegetable for its
tender shoots and leaves. It is found throughout the tropical and subtropical regions of the world, although it is not known where it originated. This plant is known in English as water spinach, river spinach, water morning glory, water convolvulus, or by the more ambiguous names Chinese spinach, Chinese Watercress, Chinese convolvulus, swamp cabbage or kangkong in Southeast Asia. Occasionally, it has also been mistakenly called "kale" in English, although kale is a strain of mustard belonging to the species Brassica oleracea and is completely unrelated to water spinach, which is a species of morning glory. It is known as phak bung in Thai and Laotian, ong choy in Cantonese, kongxincai (空心菜) in Mandarin Chinese, rau muống in Vietnamese, kangkong in Tagalog, ကန်စွန်း, gazun in Myanmar, trokuon (ត្រកួន) in Khmer, kolmou xak in Assamese, kalmi saag in Hindi, kalmi shak in Bengali, Thooti Koora in Telugu, kangkung in Indonesian, Malay and Sinhalese and hayoyo in Ghana. In Suriname (South-America) it's known as dagoeblad or dagublad.

The vegetable is a common ingredient in Southeast Asian dishes. stir-fried water spinach is a popular vegetable dish in Southeast Asia. In Singapore, Indonesia, and Malaysia, the tender shoots along with the leaves are usually stir-fried with chili pepper, garlic, ginger, dried shrimp paste (belacan/terasi) and other spices. In Penang and Ipoh, it is cooked with cuttlefish and a sweet and spicy sauce. Also known as eng cai in the Hokkien dialect, it can also be boiled with preserved cuttlefish, then rinsed and mixed with spicy rojak paste to become jiu hu eng cai. Boiled eng cai also can be served with fermented krill noodle belacan bee hoon and prawn noodle.

In Indonesian cuisine it is called kangkung, boiled or blanched together with other vegetables it forms the ingredient of gado-gado or pecel salads in peanut sauce. Some recipes that use kangkung is plecing kangkung from Lombok, and mie kangkung (kangkong noodle) from Jakarta.

If harvested from contaminated areas, and eaten raw, I. aquatica may transmit Fasciolopsis buski, an intestinal fluke parasite of humans and pigs, causing fasciolopsiasis.

In Philippine basketball, kangkong used as a slang generally by the Filipino basketball fans of the Philippine Basketball Association which refers to the league's team, Barangay Ginebra San Miguel, due to their championship drought since they won their last championship during 2008 PBA Fiesta Conference.



فَبِأَيِّ آلاءِ رَبِّكُمَا تُكَذبٰن

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