Tam was taken aback by the unique shape of the plant — “like a Napa cabbage with a giant baguette coming out of the center” — and, of course, the smell.

Closely related to turnips and napa cabbage, this mustard green is known for its use in Japanese cuisine.

She’s called her globally influenced style “third-culture cooking,” as a Chinese woman who grew up in Australia and now lives in New York, where she might spoon a tahini-miso sauce over roasted Napa cabbage, use Brussels sprouts as the unconventional base of a faux egg-salad sandwich or match feta cheese to choy sum greens.

On a recent drizzly Friday at the Rainier Beach Urban Farm and Wetlands, Laura Matter, who leads the Tilth Alliance program, stood in one of the greenhouses, surveying a line of tables covered in plastic flats filled to the brim with plant starts — mustard greens, Napa cabbage, spinach, collard.

Shaved Brussels sprouts and fennel tossed with spinach and napa cabbage get tang from goat cheese, sweetness from caramelized onions and a nice gloss from walnut vinaigrette.