Welcoming the Year of the Ox

Welcome to the Year of the Ox!  

One year, maybe about fifteen years ago, our family was worn thin by trying to schedule everyone to be together for the traditional winter holidays. So we adopted Lunar New Year as a new family holiday, which would allow us to negotiate a date between late January and early February for the entire nuclear family to participate stress free. Overall, the Lunar New Year we adopted was just about the food that we prepared and the traditions that we invented.  

We successfully held several Lunar New Year celebrations, but then weddings, kids, and household moves started to happen.  So family Lunar New Year went on hold.  Each of us celebrated in our own way, but we never got together around the giant table with the blue and white dishes.  Especially me, who always seemed to manage to order out something Asian.

However, this year some of the family was able to celebrate Lunar New Year together - and introduce the next generation to the celebration. My mother made our favorite Chinese barbecue spareribs.  My father made Drunken Chicken and vegetarian fried rice.  My brother made a delicious roasted pork dish that was bright red.  My contribution was a Szechuan peanut sauce over soba noodles.  And, as if that wasn’t enough food, my brother ordered out sushi, noodle soup, and other goodies.  It was such a lovely meal!!!

A week later, I decided to take advantage of a snowy Saturday to cook myself a celebratory Lunar New Year feast.  I had done this about four years ago to celebrate the Year of the Rooster, so I knew it would be a good way to stock my refrigerator with nutritious food for the coming week.  In fact, I was really tempted to just copy the Year of the Rooster menu because it looked so good.  But I also wanted to mix it up with something from my Dumpling Galaxy cookbook, which was acquired after that menu was formulated. 

The menu that I decided on would pretty much take all day to prepare, and employ all sorts of niche appliances:

• Single Serve Mai Tai
• Steamed Edamame 
• Blackened Pepper Crusted Tuna
• Char Siu Pork 
• Chicken with Cashews
• Chicken and Broccoli Dumplings
• Steamed Coriander Rice
• Pineapple with Cherries

Unfortunately, I did my grocery shopping later on a weekday evening to avoid an incoming snowstorm.  The seafood counter had closed; so the blackened tuna fell off the menu yet again.  But blood orange juice was readily available; I picked up a bottle of that special treat with plans to look up some interesting cocktail recipes.  If I didn’t drink it all straight first.

Char Siu Pork

I had originally thought to make char siu pork for our family feast; therefore, I arranged all the available ingredients on my kitchen counter.  It was a motley crew:  honey, hoisin, soy sauce, ketchup, ginger, garlic, Chinese Five Spice powder.  However, I never bought the necessary pork loin, so it didn’t happen in time for that.

Once all the ingredients were purchased and gathered, I thought that the next step would be to retrieve my slow cooker from the shelf in my garage, which was going to be more complex than it sounds.  So I decided to leave that for the very last minute and snuggled in with a good book on Friday night.  Unfortunately, I woke up early Saturday morning with the nagging feeling that the pork should have marinated overnight.  So I dragged my bleary self into the kitchen and checked the recipe, hoping that I could delay any kitchen activities for another few hours.  Sure enough, the pork needed to marinate for at least two hours in the refrigerator before cooking.  So I put on a pot of espresso, made the sauce, dumped that into a freezer bag with the pork loin, and shoved it all back into the refrigerator.  

Shortly before lunch, I braved the downstairs laundry room in an attempt to access the garage.  That area had become the resting place for all the cardboard boxes leftover from mail ordering Christmas.  But I managed to successfully fight my way through the cardboard to retrieve the slow cooker.  After that got set up with the pork and sauce, I had at least six hours to sort, straighten, shine, and do other household chores before my feast could begin.

Blood Orange Cocktails 

Before Saturday rolled around, I had already drank half of my bottle of blood orange juice and found a 2017 article that consolidated eighteen recipes for blood orange cocktails from across the internet.  I had enough time during the work week to scroll through the article, but it wasn’t until Saturday lunchtime that I had the time to actually pay attention to the options and hop down the various bunny trails.  The selection of cocktails included at least two variations for each of the standard bases: gin, vodka, tequila, bourbon.  Since I was feeling a light long drink using on-hand ingredients, I was able to narrow the field of eighteen to a selection of seven possibilities.  

I expected the Blood Orange Rosemary Screwdriver to require a rosemary simple syrup that could be made from the massive quantities of dried rosemary that I had in the horde cabinet.  Instead, it was just vodka and juice shaken with a sprig of fresh rosemary.  While I could have adapted the recipe to dried rosemary, it wasn’t as exciting as I had hoped it would be.  Likewise, the Blood Orange Rosemary Gin Cocktail relied on fresh rosemary leaves muddled with sugar and orange bitters, which probably would turn out bland with dried rosemary.  The Blood Orange Cardamom Bubbly required first making a very basic vanilla-cardamom simple syrup.  But otherwise, the cocktail was a mix of the flavored simple syrup, the juice, and sparkling wine.  That could be a very nice complement to the cardamom basmati rice that I had set up in my rice cooker.  The Blood Orange Sparkling Vodka required making a tarragon simple syrup; I scratched it off the list because I didn’t feel like sorting through all my spices to see if I even had tarragon.  (I know it goes nicely with roast chicken, but I can’t remember ever using it.)  Similarly, the Blood Orange Gin and Tonic required making a thyme simple syrup.  I definitely know that I have dried thyme somewhere, but, again, I didn’t feel like looking for it.  The last two drinks - the Blood Orange Elderflower Gin Cocktail and the Blood Orange Negroni - were both solid possibilities.  I didn’t have any ginger ale for the gin cocktail, but I figured that I could use either club soda or Fever Tree elderflower tonic water instead.  It would not be the same, but it would still be good.  The Blood Orange Negroni was just the standard equinox Negroni recipe, with an extra part of blood orange juice mixed in.  Based on my recent experience with the pamplemousse Negroni, I’d probably adapt the recipe at a minimum to substitute the orange Aperol for the super bitter red Campari, which I hate.

In the end, I decided to mix the orange cardamom sparkler because, in the end, I was feeling like a sparkling wine cocktail.  However, since blood oranges are in season for at least another month, there remains ample opportunity to experiment with the others.

The vanilla cardamom syrup for the sparkling wine cocktail was super simple.  It required equal parts water and white sugar, as well as one teaspoon of vanilla and a sprinkle of cardamom.  So the first question in my mind was how much to use as a “part” to marry up with one teaspoon vanilla.  Looking at the drink recipe, which was also written in parts, I’d probably only need one ounce of the syrup, as that would result in a six-ounce drink.  Therefore, I figured I would use two ounces of water and an equal volume measure of white sugar.  That would probably result in three ounces of syrup, but I could always find another use for it.  Sure enough, those measurements plus one teaspoon of my good vanilla paste and two shakes of the cardamom jar turned out a perfectly delicious syrup.  I just had to wait for it to cool completely before mixing with the chilled juice and Prosecco.

Chicken with Cashews

About three and a half hours into slow cooking the pork loin, I decided to start on the chicken with cashews.  The recipe was right below the char siu pork recipe, so I didn’t even have to turn the page.  Of course, I should have read the recipe earlier that morning when I was working on the pork.  The sauce for chicken with cashews is literally just four ingredients: sugar, sherry, soy sauce, hoisin.  And yet, while making the sauce for the pork, I made the deliberate decision to use extra hoisin because I didn’t want a jar with a scant tablespoon or two taking up valuable refrigerator real estate.  I went so far as to measure the soy sauce into the empty jar and then shake it clean to ensure that every last molecule of hoisin made it out of the jar and into the sauce for the pork.

Naturally, I scoured the horde cabinet for an extra jar of hoisin to use in my chicken dish.  I found an extra jar of minced ginger, as well as the can of coconut milk that I was looking for to make the rice.  I found white vinegar, red vinegar, apple cider vinegar, rice vinegar, and corn syrup.  I even found a jar of fig and balsamic jam!  But no hoisin.

So my options were very limited.  I briefly thought of substituting the pork sauce for the hoisin, but decided against that because I didn’t want the flavors to be too similar.  I also briefly thought of showering and putting on outside clothes in order to buy more hoisin.  But I was already planning a trip to the massive Asian supermarket for the following morning.  Because the sauce was so simple, skipping the hoisin wasn’t an option.  So I decided that I would have to skip the chicken with cashews until my hoisin stock was replenished.

Chicken and Broccoli Dumplings 

A little more than four and a half hours into slow cooking the pork, I finally checked the recipe for chicken and broccoli dumplings in the Dumpling Galaxy cookbook.  I would need to pull out the food processor for this recipe, which seemed like a lot of work.  I decided to punt this one until the next day and take a break to read some of my novel.

Mai Tai

Five and a half hours into slow cooking the pork, I sprang back into action.  

 Earlier in the day, I had set up the vegetable steamer with the edamame and the rice cooker with the cardamom rice.  I turned both of those on and let them do their thing.  

I also pulled up my Year of the Rooster post and tried to follow those instructions for a single serve Mai Tai.  Unfortunately, despite all the weirdness in my liquor cabinet, I came up short on Rose’s lime juice, amaretto, and triple sec.  Basically, the only ingredients I had were canned pineapple juice and lots of rum.  So I improvised.  I used regular lime juice for the bottle of Rose’s, which had turned a repulsive shade of brown and immediately headed into the trash.  I used Sapling for the amaretto because I thought it would add a similar sweet component.  Finally, I used a lime liqueur from the local distillery in place of the triple sec; I would have used Grand Marnier or Cointreau, but I didn’t have either of those!

The resulting drink tasted like raw alcohol, probably because of the ovenproof dark rum that I used.  I added the remainder of the small can of pineapple juice straight into my glass and that diluted it enough to taste much better - almost like a Mai Tai should!

Dinner Time!

The vegetable steamer with the edamame pinged six minutes before the pork timer was due to bark, which gave me enough time to check the vegetables for doneness and dump them into a bowl.  As the day would have it, it wasn’t until after I dumped all the frozen edamame into the vegetable steamer that I noticed the instruction to thaw the package in the refrigerator overnight first.  But all turned out well.  The edamame were the perfect snack for sipping my Mai Tai and waiting for the rice and sauce to finish up.

In the end, my well thought out Chinese New Year feast was just a plate of char siu pork and basmati rice, with a Mai Tai and some edamame on the side.  I didn’t even finish my plate!  Nor did I even consider tucking into the fresh pineapple that I had bought for dessert.  But it made me happy to plan a nice treat for myself and happy to know that I’ll have nutritious food waiting for me in the refrigerator for the week.  And, with the vanilla-cardamom syrup finally fully cooled, I can have that fancy blood orange sparkler with brunch on Sunday.