[Sca-cooks] OT: It's that time again...

[Phil Troy/ G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Hullo, the list!

Well, folks, the Lunar New Year is almost upon us again (tomorrow at 
sundown). As has become the custom here, I and sometimes others post 
their menus (those who celebrate this holiday, anyway). This is my 
somewhat reduced-labor version, largely comprised of dishes people 
who follow these posts of mine have seen before:

New Year's Eve:

--Drunken Chicken (whole, poached, marinated in distilled rice wine, 
served cold)
--Fried Fish (2, whole, rolled in seasoned flour, fried, served but 
not eaten until New Year's Day)
--Steamed Lop Cheung, Sweet Chinese Sausages (again, 2 or multiple 
thereof, at least 2 left uneaten for NYD)
--Seared freshwater prawns (in shell) served with five-spice salt dip
--Veg, probably bean sprouts since I have a big bag of them in house, 
dry-sauteed w/ginger and garlic and just a splash of light soy
--Steamed white rice
--Fruit: for some strange reason, the navel oranges in the 
stupidmarket look better than the ones in the Asian groceries I 
checked. Those, plus our usual stockpile of longan and lichee.

New Year's Day:

--Soy Sauce Chicken Wings (normally we make whole birds and they tend 
not to get eaten, in part because some people have trouble with 
chopsticks and the traditional hacked-through-skin-and-bone 
presentation, so it is now finger food)
--Steamed Juicy Buns (amazing to relate, we have finally found a 
frozen version of these that we actually like, and we've figured out 
that restaurants overcook these and then manhandle them, which is why 
they're never juicy unless you make them, carefully, at home, or go 
to a restaurant that specializes in Shanghai cuisine, where such buns 
are taken more seriously -- but they look like little drawstring 
money-pouches, so we figured they might be appropriate in this *ahem* 
improving economy)
--Cilantro Soup (basically, egg-drop soup with large amounts of 
cilantro leaves and scallions stirred in, plus bits of marinated pork 
or beef)
--Twice-Cooked Pork (braised pork belly, chilled and thinly sliced, 
stir-fried in a bean paste/chili sauce)
--Cold prawns from New Year's Eve
--Even More Drunken Chicken, from previous evening
--More Steamed Lop Cheung (sausages)
--Fried Fish from New Year's Eve (I may make a sweet-and-sour sauce 
with vinegar and sugar, a little cornstarch thickening, a can of 
ginger pickles, sliced sweet gherkins, and pineapple)
--Jai, a.k.a. Buddhist Delight (bean thread noodles, lotus root, 
black mushrooms, scallions, bean sprouts, snow peas, and bean curd, 
sauteed and sauced with oyster sauce)
--Stuffed Shrimp, wrapped in bacon and fried (I may cheat and do what 
a lot of dim-sum houses do, chop the shrimp to make the stuffing, 
make balls of the mixture and wrap those in bacon -- oddly enough, 
often served with mayo)
--Iron Steak with black mushrooms (little, pounded, flank-steak 
scalloppine -- alleged to look like a flat-iron -- tenderized with a 
pinch of baking soda, seared and served with sauteed black mushrooms 
in oyster sauce gravy.
--Assorted pickles, Our Famous All-You-Can-Heat Chili Sauce Bar -- I 
usually serve several chili sauces, and try new ones each year), 
fruits, nuts, candies, etc.

In addition to Pu Erh, Lok On, and Iron Goddess of Mercy teas (plus 
several others I won't bother with unless requested), we have the 
usual assortment of dumb bubbly sweet beverages some people like, and 
we have a couple bottles of champagne and I just located about eight 
bottles of rather old sack mead (I'm thinking this started life as 
Flieg Mead, aged about three years before we turned it into Sack 
Mead, about five years ago...).

As usual, I tend to be absent from e-mail and phone contact, as of 
tomorrow evening, through the following sundown, at least. May you 
all have a wonderful New Year (we will be entering the Year of the 
Monkey)!

Adamantius