Bok choi may look like a giant, overgrown head of celery but it’s a member of the Asian cabbage family.

And unlike celery, it’s truly a super food.  It’s tasty, versatile, and can be stored in your refrigerator for several days after purchase.

The entire plant is edible, and the sweet, succulent leaves and crunchy stalks are often added raw -- sliced, chunked or shredded -- to salads and slaws. It can also be steamed, boiled or used in stir fry and soups.

Modern hybrids range in size from 6-inch “toy” choi to large, heavy cultivars that can be 12 or even 15 inches tall. Some have white stems, some green, and at least one new cultivar has red leaves.

Some cultivars are cold hardy, others are heat tolerant, so bok choi is generally available year-round.

It’s been grown in China for more than 5,000 years and is considered one of the oldest cultivated vegetables in the world. It’s one of the most widely used vegetables all across eastern Asia and in the Philippines. In the past several decades it has become more and more popular in the United States, Canada, Europe, South Africa, South America, Australia, Central America and the Caribbean.

It’s also called pak choi, bok choy and pak choy. All the names derive from the Chinese word for “soup spoon” because its stalks, when broken off the plant, look like a spoon.

Bok choi is loaded with vitamins A, C and K and is an excellent source of calcium, magnesium, potassium, and iron. A 100-gram serving, a little more than two cups, provides 149 percent of the Vitamin A daily requirement, 75 percent of Vitamin C and 38 percent of Vitamin K. Its beta carotene levels are high enough for it to be recommended by the Macular Degeneration Association because it fights night blindness and cataracts.