[Sca-cooks] The Developing 2006 New Year's Eve menu...

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Hullo, the list!

Since for the past few years we've been celebrating the regular  
calendar New Year as a dry-run mini-Lunar New Year with champagne,  
She Who Must Be Obeyed is out, and I have been issued instructions to  
prepare a soy-sauce chicken from the whole chicken in the fridge  
(whole as in, it's got a head and feet on it) and the many-times used  
and improved red-cooking soy sauce from the freezer...

That's done, and SWMBO found some baby cuttlefish in the market  
yesterday, so those went into the braising liquid after the chicken  
came out. I'm not doing the rest (I've just been "advised" to take a  
nap! Woo-hoo! I live for this!) , and am not completely clear on  
what's being done with it all, but I gather we're not doing the usual  
thing with the two fish and the steamed lop cheung sausages, not  
until February. So, what we're looking at is something like:

	Some species of soup, but since it hasn't been started yet I assume  
it's either cilantro or corn-crab-egg-drop, both of which are quick  
to prepare
	Soy-sauce chicken
	Red-cooked cuttlefish
	Something with Jumbo Shrimp (probably just floured and fried in  
their shells and served with five-spice salt and chopped chiles)
	Something with sliced conch (I have no idea, I only work here; it  
may or may not involve Silk Squash / Chinese Okra)
	Baby bok tsoy, probably either sauteed plain or blanched and  
drizzled with oyster sauce...
	Probably various small additions will be thrown in to bring it up to  
at least nine dishes, rice, pickles, etc...

I was a little alarmed by the fact that these are small cuttlefish;  
the ones I normally see are about the size of a small, cooked  
chicken, and are thinly sliced and served cold. These ones, when  
cooked as they are, look suspiciously like tea eggs from a distance...

A Happy, Healthy and Prosperous New Year, all!

Adamantius
	
	





"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