[Sca-cooks] New Year's Prep...

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Hullo, the list!

A while back, Mistress Gwyneth (I think) asked about how we all were
celebrating the Lunar New Year. As I recall, responses were sparse.
After a Year of the Dragon which was, well, turbulent, and a Year of
the Snake which was supposed to be better, but wasn't, we now face
the Year of the Horse. This year, my wife assures me, will be
something of a foundation-building year (lots of Cantonese
manure-spreading farm jokes). I certainly don't foresee an autumn
worse than last September.

Anyway, here's my annual but somewhat simplified, not-very-elaborate
New Year's Menu, with a view toward spending more time with my
household (one of whom I almost lost at the foot of the World Trade
Center) and less time at the stove.

Fried Fish -- this is one of the dishes we're supposed to have
prepared by sundown tomorrow night. We usually do two fried fish,
representing the yin and the yang; they keep pretty well, which is
good because they're not supposed to actually be eaten until the next
day.

Steamed Lop Cheung -- Another traditional presentation; these go with
the fish, which represent procreation and regeneration. The lop
cheung (a sweet, cured sausage with grain alcohol and sugar) add
long-term prosperity to this image. These are also supposed to be
kept until New Year's Day. We usually cook a lot (there are supposed
to be 2, we do more like 20 the next day, steamed on top of the rice).

Poached Chicken -- wealth, gold (okay, the skin is sometimes
yellowish), good luck in general.

Ketchup Shrimp -- this is one of several rather easy sauteed dishes,
again, this is supposed to be done in advance; in fact it's pretty
good cold. Shrimp (in Cantonese, "har",) are considered by the
Southern Chinese to represent laughter and, therefore, happiness.
Besides, the sauce is reddish, and red is the big Chinese festival
color. Made with little, peeled, deveined, frozen (raw) shrimp. I'm
good at peeling the little buggers, don't get me wrong, but if I can
get a decent product already peeled and deveined, I'm on it like
stupid on a president...

All these are cooked before sundown on New Year's Eve. Dinner on New
Year's Eve generally consists of rice, the extra lop cheung as
described above, poached chicken with scallion/ginger oil dip, a
shrimp dish, and any vegetable we feel like cooking. I'll see what
looks good when we pick up the fish.

In addition to various leftovers from New Year's Eve, on New Year's
Day we'll serve:

Soy Sauce Chicken -- Chicken braised in soy sauce, with five spice
powder and tangerine peel. Another generic Cantonese festival food.
This should also be done in advance, and eaten at room temperature.

Five Spice Beef -- Usually beef shin with the tendons attached, but
off the bone, sort of a cold, thinly-sliced Chinese pot roast, cooked
in a liquid sufficiently similar to the liquid for Soy Sauce Chicken
that I can get away with doing the two in the same pot. I'll start
the beef in a couple of minutes, leave it to cook more or less
overnight, take it out to cool in the AM, then do the chicken in that
pot, after straining, reseasoning, and skimming the fat off the sauce.

Spring Rolls -- Well, it _is_ the Official Beginning of Spring. I
usually fill these with sauteed bean sprouts, shredded scallion,
marinated, sauteed shrimp, and shredded cooked pork (see below) or
ham (I have a hunk of baked ham left over from tonight's dinner).
I'll buy spring roll wrappers, probably the Shanghainese pancake
version rather than the pasta-dough Cantonese ones. Served with
hoisin sauce and plum sauce...

Fried Pepper Salt Prawns -- We have a box of big prawns with heads
on; these will be slit and deveined, rolled in seasoned rice flour
with some salt and five-spice added, deep-fried in the oil from the
Spring Rolls, briefly sauteed with chopped green chillies, garnished
with cilantro, and served with roasted Szechuan peppercorn salt.

Double-Sauteed Pork -- technically this is not double-sauteed, but
twice-cooked. Some versions involve deep-frying a larger piece of
meat, then slicing it and sauteeing it with enough sweet and spicy
brown bean pastes (I now have three different kinds in the cabinet:
sweet bean paste, hot bean paste, and plain salty bean paste, which,
since the other two are made from this, renders them somewhat
extraneous, but this year I decided to be silly about it) to
sauce/glaze them. I'm planning on cooking fresh bacon/pork belly,
rind on, bones out, in my seasoned soy sauce (tonight), chilling and
pressing when done, to slice and stir-fry on Tuesday, New Year's Day.
This was a big hit last year, either because it was so simple, or
because it was so different from what people only accustomed to
"Double-Sauteed Pork" find on Chinese take-out or other restaurant
menus. I may go wild and add some chopped scallion to the pan at the
last few seconds. It ends up being moist slices of pork, just a bit
crispy around the edges, in a sweet and spicy glaze.

Many of these dishes will be garnished with fat toy, the hair-like
seaweed which is another of those Chinese visual puns (think of the
usual New Year's greeting, "Gung hey fat toy!"). As usual, my wife
plans to make the vegetarian penance dish of Buddhist Delight (Jai),
and as usual, there will probably be too much food and we probably
won't bother.

Also those enormous navel oranges and/or clementines, pistacchios,
canned or fresh lichees or longans, again, based on what is available
tomorrow. Tea (57 varieties!), beer, and Evil Brown Sticky Bubbly
Fluid with too much sugar and not enough caffeine, probably the one
which does not come from Atlanta... . People expect it, and besides,
several liters of the stuff were thrust upon us by grateful Chinese
grocers (plus a 20-lb bag of jasmine rice), whose children we are no
doubt putting through Harvard.

As in previous years, I'll be unsubscribing from the list (I may get
on the digest to keep current) and letting the answering machine
answer the phone, beginning at sundown tomorrow, EDT, until at least
sundown the following day, so if anybody needs to get in touch with
me, you have about 17 hours.

Gung hey fat toy!

Adamantius