SC - Gung Ho Fat Chow?

[Philip & Susan Troy]

"Michael F. Gunter" wrote:
> 
> Well, I see Master Adamatius has rejoined the ranks of the
> cybered.

<uh, yeah...>
 
> Please tell us of your holiday last weekend. You tortured us
> so well last time, I've been waiting in antici-----PATION
> all year.

Okay, fair is fair. A brief description and menu, and then this year I
actually had the foresight to type in a couple of the recipes I knew
we'd be using before the fact, so instead of mashing my brain trying to
remember what I did, I just have to remember what I _didn't_ do! Easier.
I think. Maybe.

For those who aren't up on this stuff, a quick precis. My lady wife is
from a family that follows some very old southern Chinese traditions,
and a celebration of the Lunar New Year is, for her, a major religious
holiday just as, say, Christmas might be for some religious Westerners.
The Object Of The Game is to spend the New Year festival doing what you
want to spend the rest of the year doing. To this end, you erase as much
previous kharma as possible by paying your debts, cleaning your home
with extreme prejudice, as it were, making peace with your enemies, and
generally thinking good thoughts. Some people also tend to ignore the
phone and the mailbox on the grounds that they'd rather receive
potential bad news after New Year's is over. By extension this meant
that we were offline as far as e-mail and such were concerned. Another
aspect of a standard Chinese New Year celebration is the traditional
foods, some of which are pretty tightly prescribed according to region,
since the names of the dishes have significance as double entendres. So,
for example, the Cantonese "hahr" or shrimp, portends laughter for the
coming year. Har de har har. This type of food shows up on New Year's
Eve, and on New Year's Day people who are dining at home eat their New
Year's Eve leftovers plus the traditional Buddhist vegetarian dish known
in Cantonese as jai. Plus, since a good host wouldn't dream of expecting
guests to adhere to such austerity, pretty much anything else one cares
to cook is fair game, with a few exceptions deemed, for their symbolism, inappropriate.

So. The standard necessities for New Year's Eve (to be cooked and
served, at least to the table, before sundown) are two whole fish,
usually fried, for their keeping abilities. These represent fertility
and regeneration, just as the lop cheung, sweet red pork sausages
traditionally served alongside them, represent abundance throughout the
year since they're a preserved food. A common presentation is a sort of
mandala on a round platter of the two fish, head to tail, surrounded by
the sausages, usually steamed on top of a pot of rice. Both the fish and
the sausages must be in multiples of two. Other standard necessities
include a whole poached chicken, head and feet preferred intact, which
represents simplicity in life and good fortune. If you have a chicken
with a nice yellow skin this indicates financial good fortune to some.
To round things off you have a shrimp dish for laughter and joy, then
anything else you may want to cook. Food to avoid include cephalopods
such as squid or octopus, and larger arthropods such as crabs or
lobsters. These are, supposedly, grasping creatures and invite conflict.
Some also consider the hissing sound of vegetables being sauteed in a
wok to sound a bit too much like a whispered argument. Same thing.
Blanch your New Year's Eve veggies instead. 

The fish and sausages are to be saved through the following day until
sundown in their multiples of two, so their effect will last through the
year. What we do is make lots of extras, and people eat them both days,
being sure to leave a multiple of two for New Year's Day. You're
supposed to leave a little of each dish behind in your rice bowl, with a
bite of rice, when you're done, so your bowl will never be empty in the
coming year. It is also advisable to have an extra table setting in case
of unexpected arrivals, and if any unexpected guests do show up, make
sure to compensate with an additional table setting. This includes a
glass of wine or other spiritous beverage (in China there's virtually no
difference, conceptually, between wine and beer and distilled spirits;
you drink any or all with meals). When asked why I was filling a silver
quaich with my oldest whisky but allowing nobody to touch it, I answered
that it was for Elijah, and my wife opened her mouth to correct this,
thought for a second, then decided that was close enough. 

So here's what we cooked:

For Friday, which was New Year's Eve --

- - An assortment of mixed pickles including shredded baby winter bamboo
shoots in chili oil, tiny gherkins in soy sauce, in both sweet and spicy
versions, sweet pickled shallots and ash-preserved "thousand-year-old"
duck eggs 

- -The aforementioned fish and sausages. This year we cheated and bought
whole smoked trout, since we've just moved and were renovating the old
apartment for rental at the same time as getting ready for New Year's

- - The rice the sausages were steamed over, naturally full of lop cheung essence

- - Plain poached "white cut" chicken, cut in chunks and reassembled on
the platter, served with chili oil, enriched soy sauce from the cooking
of soy sauce chicken and five spice beef, ginger-and-scallion oil sauce,
cilantro leaves and roasted five-spice salt as dips

- - Dry-sauteed whole prawns 

- - A green veg identified only as tong vah, a long crunchy hollow stem
with a small diamond-shaped leaf a little like spinach or mallows,
possibly an amaranth relative,  with ginger, shallots and fu ngoi,
a.k.a. fu yee or fermented bean cake sauce, sauteed (yes, I know!) to
the accompaniment of the Chieftains playing "Full of Joy" really loudly
with the Peking Philharmonic, to baffle the offensive sound...

- -Beef and Egg-flower soup with cilantro

The above served with homemade blood-orange sorbet and lichees, longans,
and pistachios, with an assortment of beverages including three or four
different Chinese teas, single-malt whisky for the truly hard-core
Chinese banquet-goers, homemade cherry wine and the Pepsi somebody
insisted on bringing.

Saturday, New Year's Day:

- - A pre-meal nosh of spring rolls with beef and shrimp filling

- - More pickles
    
- - Fish and Sausages, Part Deux

- - See Yu Gai, Soy Sauce Chicken, identical in presentation to the
poached chicken but braised or red-cooked in soy sauce (made the
previous day)

- - Red-Cooked Five Spice Beef Shin (also made the previous day and cooked
in the cooking liquid from the soy sauce chicken, suitably doctored)

- - Bacon-Wrapped Shrimp Rolls

- - Iron Steak (pounded, marinated cutlet-y units on top of veggies in
oyster sauce gravy)  

- - Jai, a.k.a. Buddhist Delight (must be at least five veggies in this)

- - Sauteed Bok Toy Sum, hearts of bok toy, plain with garlic and ginger
in the oil, salt and white pepper, illegally stir-fried to the obscuring
accompaniment, IIRC, of the Corries singing something fun

- - A very standard, commercial-variety stir-fried chicken in curry sauce
was 86ed due to lack of room on the table and in stomachs, as well as
the non-appearance of the person who requested I cook it so she could
learn how it was done
  
- - Reruns of the previous night's beverages and desserts, except for four
_different_ Chinese teas

As I say, I have some of the recipes that I used written up. They'll
need editing, for example, because the bacon-wrapped shrimp won't cook
through in the time I originally specified: I chilled them a bit in the
freezer to firm them up, then found they were burning before they were
cooked through, so by cooking them longer, slower, and at a lower
temperature, and by making them smaller, I'll get better results. I'll
start posting some of the recipes tomorrow.

Once again, a Happy New Year to all!
 
Adamantius
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com