Tokyo bekana is a mustard green that can easily replace romaine lettuces in your salad mix, especially in the warmer months when lettuces are harder to grow or tend to go bitter. It has sweet flavor with the crunchy crisp texture of lettuce. It germinates easily, is easy to grow and a prolific producer with large light green leaves and a crunchy midrib that adds volume and texture to your salad. Can also be stir-fried like a chinese cabbage.
 
Nutritional Value
Tokyo Bekana is an excellent source of fiber that can help aid in digestion and contains vitamins A, C, and K to help protect the body from environmental damage. It also contains some magnesium, calcium, iron, and folate.
 
Applications
Tokyo Bekana cabbage is best suited for both raw and cooked applications such as sautéing, steaming, and stir-frying. The frilly green is mild, lacking in traditional cabbage flavors, and can be shredded and tossed into green salads, mixed into pasta dishes for added crispness, braised as a side dish, or sliced and added to soups. Tokyo Bekana cabbage can also be lightly stir-fried and mixed with cooked vegetables and meat, used as a lettuce wrap, or pickled into a sweet and spicy condiment. Tokyo Bekana cabbage pairs well with mushrooms, fennel, tomatoes, cucumber, avocado, potatoes, onions, ginger, garlic, herbs such as thyme, basil, and mint, parmesan cheese, cherries, grapefruit, and peaches. The cabbage will keep up to one week when stored in a plastic bag in the crisper drawer of the refrigerator.
 
Ethnic/Cultural Info
Tokyo Bekana cabbage is being trialed and grown on the International Space Station as part of the Veg-03 experiment. Learning how to grow vegetables in space for extended space missions, Nasa is using specialized growth chambers with LED lights to allow astronauts to cultivate their own food to obtain fresh ingredients with high nutritional properties. Tokyo Bekana cabbage is being tested for further space cultivation because it is a fast-growing variety and has earned the nickname of “space cabbage.” Tokyo Bekana can also be harvested at any stage in maturity and has successfully been grown alongside red romaine lettuce and mizuna in space.