[Sca-cooks] OOP - It's that time again/Lunar New Year

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

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