[Sca-cooks] OOP - It's that time again/Lunar New Year
Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius
adamantius.magister at verizon.net
Fri Feb 4 12:51:12 PST 2005
Hullo, the list!
Once again, the Lunar New Year is rolling around on the git-tar, and
I'm posting my tentative menus for Tuesday night, which is the new
moon ringing in the Year of the Cock, (commonly known around here,
inaccurately, as New Year's Eve), and for Wednesday afternoon/evening
-- commonly but erroneously known as New Year's Day, being in fact
sundown of New Year's Day, which started the night before.
We're not doing anything unusual this year, so most of this will
probably be familiar to some of you, if from nowhere else, from
previous years' posts here. As usual, some of the food is for ritual
purposes (the ritual consisting mostly of cooking and eating the food
at the appropriate time). Here goes:
Tuesday night --
2 plain, whole fish, rolled in seasoned flour and pan-fried
in wok -- probably white perch (eaten the next day)
2 steamed lop cheung, sweet Chinese pork sausages -- should
be eaten the next day, we cook extra in multiples of two because
offspring is lop cheung fiend
Plain, blanched leafy vegetable, whatever looks good at the
market, and can be cooked without chopping, such as bok toy, Chinese
broccoli (which looks like broccoli-rabe, only sweeter), etc.
White-cut chicken, poached with gin, served just warm with
ginger-scallion dipping oil
Five-spice beef, usually a boned piece of shin, braised in
dark soy with sherry and five-spice, served cold in thin slices with
dipping sauces
Plain dry-sauteed small shrimp (i.e., sans gravy), with
ginger, scallion, and red pepper flakes
Winter Melon Soup, stock made from chicken and pork bones,
and shrimp shells, with black mushrooms, dried shrimp, and pork
meatballs in the finished soup
Steamed rice
Fruit -- blood oranges, probably canned longans in syrup
Will probably open the bottle of Dom Perignon that's been
sitting in the fridge, perry for da kid. The Kitchen God will get a
libation (a.k.a. The Prophet Elijah) in a Scottish silver quaich of
21-year-old Laphroaig malt whisky.
Whatever Chinese tea I feel like making
Wednesday evening --
Soy Sauce Chicken - Braised in dark soy sauce, five spice
mixture, tangerine peel
Winter Melon Soup from previous evening
White-Cut Chicken from previous evening
Five-Spice Beef from previous evening
Shredded smoked duck and/or pheasant (we have them sitting in
the fridge), sauteed with pine nuts and hoisin sauce, served warm,
wrapped in lettuce leaves
Whole monster prawns, dry-sauteed, served on top of lobster
sauce (IOW, the sauce for Lobster Cantonese: oyster-sauce gravy,
enriched with sauteed ground pork, fermented black beans, ginger,
garlic slices, scallions, chili flakes, and beaten egg)
Jai, a.k.a. Buddhist Delight, mixed [in this case] shredded
vegetables, cellophane noodles and dried bean curd, cooked
previously, then when cold, wrapped into Spring Rolls and fried
Sauteed Flatiron steak braised with onion and black mushrooms
-- tenderized, pounded flank steak, like Chinese Chicken Fried Steak
chunks, seared and braised with a brown sauce, with sauteed black
mushrooms and fanned onion slices
Fried fish from previous evening -- may make a sweet-and-sour
sauce with sweet mixed ginger pickle, pineapple, etc.
Steamed Sausages from previous evening
Twice-Cooked Pork -- pork belly with its rind, simmered until
tender, boned, cooled, sliced thin and stir-fried till slightly
crispy with a chili/brown bean paste glaze
More steamed rice
Fruit
More tea -- I have some Iron Goddess of Mercy tea -- a
whole-leaf, very pale, but allegedly black tea, very rich, to be
sipped in small cups, not for a caffeine fix when hung over
Assorted home brew, some of that too-sweet bubbly stuff kids
insist on drinking, more perry
The management wishes to remind you this is a tentative menu, and
subject to change without advance notice...
Happy New Year to all!
Adamantius, who will be off-line most of Tuesday and Wednesday, as usual
--
"S'ils n'ont pas de pain, vous fait-on dire, qu'ils mangent de la
brioche!" / "If there's no bread to be had, one has to say, let them
eat cake!"
-- attributed to an unnamed noblewoman by Jean-Jacques
Rousseau, "Confessions", 1782
"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?"
-- Susan Sheybani, assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry
Holt, 07/29/04
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