Welcoming the Year of the Rooster

One of my favorite family traditions has been the celebration of Chinese New Year. It was the one holiday that was just our nuclear family. It was always a negotiated date within three or four weeks of the actual calendar holiday so all my siblings could attend stress free. It was just about the food that we prepared and the traditions that we invented. Granted, we haven’t done it in a few years – perhaps since the family cookbook was published - but the holiday always holds a soft spot in my heart. Thanks to the encouraging text messages from some of my friends, I decided to cook a mini-feast for myself to celebrate the holiday this year.

Fortunately, the family cookbook preserved a menu from one of Dad’s elaborate family Chinese New Year feasts, as well as a menu from one of my more casual Chinese New Year get togethers. A terrific friend whose family celebrates an authentic Chinese New Year every year coached me on what foods are absolutely necessary. She said that it was super important to have noodles for longevity, good luck, and good finances. Fish was the other most important dish to have, even if it was a little bit of lox, although she didn’t say why.

Flipping through the family cookbook, I formulated the following tentative menu and headed to the local supermarket:

• Mai Tai
• Blackened Pepper Crusted Tuna
• Szechwan Peanut Noodles
• Chicken with Cashews
• Chinese Barbecue Spareribs
• Steamed Coriander White Rice
• Pineapple with Cherries

Unfortunately, the fish counter at the supermarket had no tuna steaks and I wasn’t in the mood to turn this quick shopping trip into a multi-store quest. Since my friend insisted that I have fish at my mini-feast, I bought a bag of shrimp on a whim and decided that I would figure out something to do with them once I got them home. Sure enough, the family cookbook had a recipe for Szechwan Shrimp that I could fairly easily adapt to the ingredients that I had on hand in the house.

Mai Tai

The brother who cooks always showed up to the family Chinese New Year with a large white and blue porcelain crock full of Mai Tai, a pineapple juice based rum drink. When I asked him for the recipe, it was all about starting with big cans of pineapple juice and then measuring various liquors with a pint glass. When I attempted the recipe the following year for my Chinese New Year dinner party, I translated his recipe to a smaller scale by neurotically measuring with a can of frozen pineapple concentrate. Although my approximation was tasty, it just wasn’t as good as his!

Fortunately, my translation of my brother’s Mai Tai recipe lends itself to scaling down to a single serving by simply measuring with a 1½ ounce shot glass instead of with an 8-ounce pineapple juice can. Since I had a lot of canned pineapple juice on hand, I didn’t bother to buy any frozen pineapple concentrate. So I started with one six-ounce can of pineapple juice over ice in a pint glass. It should have only been 4½ ounces, but I remember the drink being fairly strong so I opted to tone it down some right off the bat. Of course, after measuring the juice into the pint glass, I realized that I should have measured it into the larger cocktail shaker so that everything would fit. So I dumped it all into my cocktail shaker before adding the lime juice and liquors. Since I still had some good quality strong not-from-concentrate lime juice in the refrigerator, I opted to use that over Rose’s lime. I had to substitute Grand Marnier for triple sec because I didn’t have any triple sec. Similarly, I had to substitute white rum for spiced rum. Once everything was measured into the cocktail shaker, I shook it to a count of thirty, and then strained it into the pint glass.

My single serve Mai Tai was excellent. It was almost as good as the ones I remember being made by my brother who cooks. Of course, even without the customary dark rum floater, I was glad that I used the full six ounces of pineapple juice.

In order to mitigate the effects of the Mai Tai, I steamed a bag of edamame with sea salt to nibble on while cooking my Chinese New Year mini feast. Figuring out how to do this in an actual vegetable steamer was fairly comical because the package of edamame only gave directions for steaming in the package in the microwave and for boiling in a pot on the stovetop. Eventually, I decided that the steaming time was roughly the same as the stovetop boiling time. I set the timer on the steamer for five minutes, and enjoyed perfectly steamed edamame.

Chinese Barbecue Spareribs

With my drink and snack under control, I proceeded to tackle the mini feast. Since the Chinese Barbecue Spareribs needed to marinate for an hour prior to roasting, I figured I would start those first. When I called my mother on Friday to ask how she and my father were planning to celebrate Chinese New Year this year, she said that she would make Chinese Barbecue Spareribs. The recipe is very easy – just five ingredients in the sauce and five steps to the recipe – and they make terrific leftovers.

Once I had my ribs separated and marinating in the sauce in a gallon plastic bag, I decided to start the white rice, since that would take twenty minutes from the time the water boiled. As discussed previously, I have a rather controversial approach to cooking white rice: I start with a 2:1 ratio of water to rice, wait for the water to boil before adding the rice, seal the pot, lower the heat as low as it will go, and leave it be. No stirring allowed. Most of the times it works out just fine for me. This time it worked wonderfully. Of course, after it was done, I realized that I had wanted to make coriander rice! Oh well…

After the rice was done and I had taken care of a few other tasks, it was time to roast the ribs. Rather than lay them out on cooling racks over aluminum foil lined baking tins, I simply arranged them in my largest glass baking dish. This had the advantage of my being able to snap the lid over any leftovers and pop them into the refrigerator without any fuss. The ribs were supposed to roast for 45 minutes, but I set my timer for 25 minutes so that I could flip them approximately halfway through their roasting time.

Although I put two ribs on my mini feast plate, I only ate one of them. It was very good – almost as good as Mom’s – but I was just so full that I couldn’t stand to eat any more!

Szechwan Peanut Noodles

I absolutely love these noodles! When the sauce is done right, it is the perfect balance of heat, sweet, and peanutty goodness. In fact, I think my craving for them was what finalized my decision to treat myself to a Chinese New Year mini feast. Of course, the trick is to get the sauce right. And this time, I did. What I did was measure everything up until the chicken broth. Before adding the chicken broth, I stirred the sauce to make sure all the ingredients were well combined. And I tasted it to see how strong it was. Then I added a small splash of chicken broth and stirred that in. I tasted it again. I added another small splash of chicken broth and stirred that in. I tasted it again and declared it done.

While I was cooking the rice and marinating the baby back ribs, I put on a large pot of water to cook a package of rice noodles. According to the package, they only had to cook for three minutes, so that is all I let them cook before draining them in the sink, returning them to the pot, and tossing them with the peanut sauce.

The Szechwan Peanut Noodles were so good that I pulled out a pair of chopsticks and kept stealing little bites from the pot as I was finishing cooking the rest of the meal. Maybe that is why I was so full when I finally sat down with my mini feast plate?

Chicken with Cashews

My family’s Chicken with Cashews recipe originated with a newspaper clipping that is older than half of us kids. While I love the recipe, I really hate preparing the chicken; it gets sprinkled with cornstarch, mixed with egg white, and then deep-fried. It makes a monster oily mess every time. Fortunately, my father clued me into a shortcut: he skips the first three recipe steps and uses plain unseasoned unbreaded precooked white meat chicken strips. He said all he does is cut the chicken strips into properly sized cubes and then stir-fries them with the sauce and cashews. Sometimes he starts by stir-frying some green bell pepper.

Rather than deal with the monster oily mess, I decided to give my father’s approach a try. First, I made a double batch of the sauce and set it aside. Then, I cubed a green bell pepper and stir-fried that until it turned bright green. Next, I added the precooked white meat chicken strips and cashews and stir-fried that until it was heated through. Finally, I poured in the sauce and stir-fried that until everything was well coated. It worked like a charm!

Szechwan Shrimp

At some point before Chinese New Year 2009, my father invented this recipe for Szechwan Shrimp, so I didn’t feel bad at all about messing with it to accommodate the ingredients that I had on hand. Since I didn’t have lemon grass oil for the shrimp marinade, I had a few options: double the chili oil, substitute blood orange oil, substitute olive oil mixed with a teaspoon or two of dried lemongrass. I chose the last option. Of course, I was so busy in the kitchen with the other dishes that I would have forgotten about the shrimp had it not been for a text conversation with a good friend that somehow digressed to the topic of Chinese seafood dishes. So, while I was able to get the shrimp defrosted in time for dinner, I was not able to marinate it in the oils for an hour before stir-frying. It was more like ten minutes! I didn’t have any appropriate dried chiles – just the Mexican ones that I needed for mole sauce – so I skipped the step requiring sautéing them in peanut oil until dark. I wasn’t sure what the recipe meant by “Szechwan paste” so I used sambal oelek, which is an Indonesian condiment made from raw chiles, in the sauce. And, of course, I skipped the garnish of chopped scallion.

The Szechwan Shrimp was really good, but really spicy! Even without the dried chiles. I’m glad that I chose to serve it over rice because it needed that cut the spiciness. Fortunately, it was the last thing that I ate on my mini feast plate, so the taste didn’t carry over into the other dishes that I had prepared.

Pineapple with Cherries

The Pineapple Boat is a standard appetizer at family functions. What we do is vertically quarter a pineapple, cut the fruit from the rind, and then slice the flesh into bite-sized pieces crosswise. The bite-sized pieces are then studded with cherries using toothpicks. It makes for a very artistic arrangement on the table.

Since I wouldn’t be able to finish an entire pineapple in a timely fashion, I adapted this concept for my mini feast. I bought a small container of pre-cut fresh pineapple at the supermarket, knowing that I had jars of homemade maraschino cherries in my refrigerator from when cherries were in season this summer. In between recipe steps, I used toothpicks to stick the cherries into the pineapple pieces. Eventually, I had a bowl full of fruit skewers for dessert. I was, however, too full to eat dessert. So I left them in the refrigerator for breakfast and healthy snacks.



The Verdict

Per my good friend’s suggestion, I made a plate with just a few bites of each recipe and packed the remainder away for the rest of the week. Since I had finished my single serve Mai Tai while cooking my mini feast, I prepared an excellent experimental Orange Cardamom Spritzer in lieu of the traditional mid-feast champagne toast – more on that in a later post.

Overall, I was very pleased by my Chinese New Year mini feast, even though it didn’t turn out exactly as planned. I was so full that I couldn’t finish my plate and had to skip dessert. And my getting all the leftovers into my refrigerator was truly an exercise in playing Tetris! But now I don’t have to cook for at least the next week - if not the next week and half.

The Recipes

Mai Tai
This is my neurotic “count and measure” interpretation of my brother’s original Chinese New Year Mai Tai, which he serves in a large porcelain crock. You can also use 3 cups of regular canned pineapple juice, and 1-cup measurement for the can. Or you can do like I did and use a 1½ oz shot glass to measure a very generous single serving.

1. Empty 1 can frozen pineapple juice concentrate into a blender. Save the can.
2. Using the pineapple juice can as a measurement, add the following to the blender:
• 1 can regular or Rose’s lime juice (1 small bottle)
• ½ can amaretto
• 1 can triple sec
• 1 can spiced rum
• 1 can dark rum
3. Blend until foamy. Test.
4. Add 1-2 cans water or ice if too strong. Otherwise serve as is.

♥ The liquor base can be prepared several days ahead of time (1 can = 1 cup = 8 fluid ounces) and refrigerated until the party. Add the frozen pineapple juice concentrate (or 3 cups regular pineapple juice) to the blender/jug/pitcher and mix in the liquor base to taste.

Barbecue Spareribs
This has been a favorite since childhood - and a staple at Chinese New Year and other Asian inspired buffets.

2-3 lbs baby back ribs
5 tbsp hoisin sauce
2 tbsp sherry
2 tbsp sugar
3 tbsp soy sauce
¼ tsp five spices

1. Cut ribs apart into 2" sections.
2. Combine remaining ingredients to form a thick sauce.
3. Marinate ribs in sauce for at least 1 hour.
4. Place ribs on baking racks on baking sheets lined with heavy duty aluminum foil.
5. Roast at 325F for 35-45 minutes. Turn and baste ribs with leftover sauce at least once in baking period.

Szechwan Peanut Noodles
This sauce is so simple, I don’t know why anyone would use the store bought stuff.

1 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp sesame oil
2 tbsp soy sauce
2 tsp vinegar
2 tsp chili oil
⅓ cup peanut butter
⅓ cup chicken broth

1. In small bowl, mix sugar through peanut butter and stir until smooth.
2. Add broth slowly and stir or shake until smooth. (Alternately, add all ingredients to a small jar with a tight fitting lid and shake really well.)
3. Toss with two packages of cooked and well-rinsed ramen noodles (the cheaper the better!)

♥ Alternate method to double the recipe: Use 5 tbsp sesame, 3 tbsp soy and 1 tbsp chili oil. Stick with normal math to double the remainder of the ingredients.
♥ Chicken Satay: Divide the peanut sauce in half. Thin one half with a little extra broth, and use this to marinate thinly sliced chicken or ½” cubes of chicken. Remove the chicken from the marinade, slide onto soaked bamboo skewers and broil or grill over high heat until cooked through. Turn once during cooking and baste continually with leftover marinade. Serve warm with a side of uncontaminated peanut sauce.

Chicken with Cashews
Mom and Dad may still have this newspaper clipping, which would be older than half of us kids!

1 ½ lbs boneless chicken breast
1 tbsp cornstarch
1 unbeaten egg white
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp hoisin sauce
1 tbsp cooking sherry
1 tbsp peanut oil
⅓ cup cashews
1 tsp sugar

1. Clean chicken of excess skin and fat. Cut into ½" cubes and place in a med. bowl.
2. Sprinkle chicken with cornstarch. Add egg white, a few drops of water and a few drops of oil. Stir to coat.
3. Deep fry chicken and set aside.
4. Mix together soy sauce, hoisin sauce, sugar and sherry in a separate small bowl.
5. Heat peanut oil in a wok over high heat. Add chicken, sauce and cashews.
6. Stir-fry until well mixed and hot.

Szechwan Shrimp

12 prawns, peeled and deveined
1 tbsp corn starch
1 tsp lemon grass oil
1 tsp hot chili oil
3 tbsp peanut oil
4-8 dried chilis
2 tbsp minced garlic
2 tbsp minced fresh ginger
2 tbsp soy sauce
½ tsp sugar
2 tbsp szechuan paste
1 tbsp tomato paste
Chopped scallions

1. Toss shrimp with lemon grass oil, hot oil and corn starch. Cover and refrigerate for at least one hour.
2. Heat peanut oil in wok or deep skillet. Add dried chilis and cook until dark.
3. Add garlic and ginger. Stir-fry for 10-30 seconds.
4. Add shrimp. Stir-fry until pink, approximately 2 minutes.
5. Combine soy, sugar, szechuan paste and tomato paste in small bowl.
6. Add sauce to wok and cook for 2 minutes.
7. Toss with chopped scallions and serve over cooked noodles.

Homemade Maraschino Cherries
This recipe is pretty much straight off the Food & Wine website, with the only change being that they cool the cherries in the syrup before transferring to a jar. I like to cool in a jar because the heat will seal the jar.

1 pound large fresh sweet cherries
1 ½ cups water
½ cup red grape juice
1 cup sugar
1 star anise pod
pinch kosher salt
3 tbsp lemon juice
1 tsp almond extract

1. Rinse cherries thoroughly. Remove stems. If desired, remove pits.
2. In a medium nonreactive saucepan, boil together water, red grape juice, sugar, star anise and salt until sugar dissolves completely.
3. Add the cherries, lemon juice and almond extract. Stir well to combine.
4. Simmer until cherries are just barely tender, about five minutes.
5. Transfer cherries to clean jars and top with hot syrup. Seal tightly.
6. Cool completely at room temperature. The jars should pop.
7. Refrigerate for minimum overnight, and maximum two weeks.

• One batch I forgot the lemon juice and the almond extract, and they still turned out okay. I’ve only tried it with Welch’s 100% Red Grape Juice (which is a real thing) so I don’t know how well it will work with the standard purple grape juice.