sheetz

Aside from the chicken, the menu I prepared (Winter melon soup, cold meat platter, stir fried lotus root w/ veggies, glutinous rice chicken, sweet red bean soup) and took pictures of in the CNY thread was as simple as you can get. The only problem, if it is one, is that it's decidedly Cantonesey, while your red cooked carp isn't. You can easily put your tangyuan in the red bean soup and it's so easy to make. Just boil the red beans until they are soft, then give the whole thing a whirl in the blender. Add sugar to taste and the tangyuan. As dejah said you can add other symbolic items like lotus seeds, almonds, or lily bulbs.

I know what you mean. This is especially a problem when I test new recipes because I hate to throw away my failures. It's just so un-Toisanese! A professional? Oh, that's a good one! I'm just a self taught amateur who loves to cook. I've never even worked in a McDonalds.

Nice! I haven't made these in ages but maybe it's time to revisit them.

This is like a trip down memory lane of my childhood snacks. White Rabbit candies were my absolute favorite candies in the world. I never cared for fortune cookies, but the almond cookies at Queen's Bakery in LA chinatown are the best! One of these days I'll figure out their recipe and do a pictorial.

Haha, that never occured to me because in Toisanese it's called "hoi taam," which isn't a homophone for "happy."

Beautiful pics, Stuart! From what I know the rice pudding and red dates are traditional CNY foods. I don't think lamb is, but from the photo is looks like the dish also contained bean curd skins, which are traditional. Not sure if sea cucumber has any specific connotation wrt CNY except that it's a prized delicacy and having them would promote greater prosperity in the coming year.

Actually 1 litre would be a little more than 32 fluid ounces. Obviously the best way to approach this would be to make a very tiny quantity using the ingredients and just play around with it till it tastes right.

I think the meat wonton wrappers are Fujianese.

OK, that's a different fish dish, one sometimes called "emperor's fish," and it is indeed a northern specialty. Pouring 1/2 cup of hot oil over the fish the way I and others have described is southern style.

Sesame oil might be used this way by some people but I've personally never heard of it. The traditional way of doing this is to heat about 1/2 cup of peanut oil to around smoking, which I'd say is roughly 400F and then pour it over the whole steamed fish which has been covered with jullianed ginger and scallions.

Yep, the real chui pei nor mai gai and not the "fake" ones like what is typically served at dim sum and often mistaken for joong. Now look at that nor mai gai and tell me if that looks anything like a joong!

Usually, it's just regular peanut oil that's used and not sesame oil

I glanced thru the course and Q&A, and though the course was very good, it was really just common sense and nothing I didn't already know. Several key points that were brought up --There's no real point in spending big bucks on thermally responsive cookware when using an electric stove because the slowness of the heat source negates any of the cookware's inherent advantages. Hence, almost any curved sauteusse evasee type pan (of which a flat bottomed wok is one) would work reasonably well for stir frying on an electric cooktop. --A stainless lined copper pan might work great, but most of us have to consider the cost to performance ratio when choosing our cookware. --Technique when stir frying is especially important. All the experienced cooks in this forum know the basic stir frying rules like not overcrowding the pan, cooking the meat separately, and blanching certain veggies before adding them in. Understanding these basic concepts will carry one quite far without the need of any special type of cookware.

Thank you, I'm truly humbled!

Ah Leung, what's the difference between the light colored dried oysters you cooked with the fat choy and the reddish brown ones your MIL used in the soup? I'm more used to eating the reddish brown ones.

Could be. Looks similar to what I had except that yours were covered with sesame seeds(?) and other stuff. I have to join the chorus and tell you how much I'm enjoying your blog. Since I live out in the boonies we don't even have Chinese restaurants or shops as good as those in Sacramento. Some of those dim sum at Happy Garden actually look halfway decent, but what I'm focused on are those pretty little steamer baskets for the har gow and siu mai. Any idea where I can buy those?

Wow, Tepee, those even still have the heads on! Yeah, mine was basically like that. Raw chicken skin is actually pretty resistant to tearing as long as you make sure the chicken skin doesn't have any punctures to begin with.

It's really not that complicated as far as recipes go, just technically demanding and requiring a whole lot of patience. First, get around a 4 lb chicken and loosen the skin around the neck. Cut through the wing joints and gradually separate the skin from the meat until you are down to the legs. Then pull apart the rib cage and remove. At the bottom of the chicken, cut through the tail bone so the tip of the tail remains attached to the skin. For the legs, cut at the joint between the thighs and the drumsticks, then pull the skin halfway down the drumsticks and hack the larger half of the drumstick with a cleaver. After this is done you're left with a whole chicken skin with just the wings and the drumstick tips attached. Remove all the meat from the bones and cut into cubes. Marinate it however you would normally marinate chicken. Then stir fry the chicken and set it aside to place in the stuffing. To make the stuffing, boil 1 1/2 cups raw glutinous rice the way you normally would, then stir in the cooked chicken and any other kind of stuff you like. I like lop cheung, lop yuk, black mushrooms, dried shrimp, peanuts, scallions, and cilantro. For seasonings you can add to taste: oyster sauce, soy sauce (dark or light), sesame oil, salt, pepper, or even chicken boullion powder. To stuff the chicken, using kitchen twine sew up the neck opening and any tears in the skin, then fill the skin with the rice stuffing and sew it up. Using your hands mold the stuffed skin until it resembles a whole chicken again. Place the stuffed "chicken" on a roasting rack and bake in a 325F oven for 45 min, then flip over and continue to bake for another 45 min. (This step is to render most of the fat from the skin so it gets crispy during the final cooking.) Cool to room temperature. Heat a cast iron skillet over medium heat until hot, then add just enough oil to lightly coat the bottom. Place the chicken in the skillet and cover with aluminum foil. Place a heavy weight on top of the foil (I use a pot of water) and press down on it. Lower the heat to medium low and cook until the skin is browned and crispy. Meanwhile preheat the oven to 450F. After the skin is browned flip the chicken over and press it down firmly into the skillet. If there's too much grease in the skillet you can pour it out or mop it up with paper towels. Place the skillet in the oven and finish cooking until the bottom is browned and the filling cooked through. You can turn the heat down to 200F and keep it warm in the oven until time to serve. NOTE: Instead of roasting the chicken in a conventional oven at 325F for 1 1/2 hours I roasted it in a turbo convection oven. I assume the results would be the same, but just letting you know. That's it! Easy peasy, right?

Thanks, but you're one to talk. I'm just trying my best to keep up with people like you and Tepee! It's true. Just seeing what real cooks at home can do has given me the confidence to attempt things I would have never dreamed of doing before.

Growing up, CNY in my family was never as big a deal as it was for some other families, so it's interesting to see all the things other families do. We always ate at home and usually had chicken, fu juk soup with fat choi and dried oysters, and maybe a few other things. My dad also popped a pack of fire crackers before we ate. This was CNY dinner: First off was winter melon soup with dried scallops, red dates, black mushrooms, chicken, shrimp, and ham. Then the cold platter with sesame walnuts, roast duck (store bought), bbq spare rib tips, 5 spice beef, and cold sweet and sour cucumber slices. Next was the piece de resistance--boneless crispy skinned chicken stuffed with glutinous rice. I've mentioned this dish before as being intimidating, but I decided to just bite the bullet and go for it. (And in case I messed up I had a store bought soy sauce chicken for backup. ) Traditionally, the chicken is deep fried to achieve the crispy skin but here I pan fried it on both sides and served it in a cast iron skillet. Inside: It tasted great-the skin was thin and crisp like parchment, but was very time consuming to make. Probably took more time to prepare than the rest of the dinner put together. To accompany this was a simple stir fried lotus root with mixed vegetables: And to finish it off was sweet red bean soup with lotus seeds and lily bulbs.

Gram per gram that is correct, but what you are not taking into consideration is the relative thickness of the cookware. A thin sheet of carbon steel like that used for a wok will respond more quickly to changes in temperature than a very thick piece of cast iron or even aluminum.

Exactly. I used to use a cast iron skillet for most of my chinese cooking and I would usually have to adapt certain recipes when cooking with it. For example, I'd often take it off the heat a little early, and when mixing sauces I'd add a little extra water to account for the extra evaporation due to the hot pan.

When I've seen chefs on TV do it they use big steel strainers like this one: http://www.wokshop.com/HTML/products/acces..._perfscoop.html The strainer is dipped in the oil and then the meat is placed on top and stirred around for a few seconds, then lifted out using the strainer.

LOL Clearly the answer to all our problems is to use Chinese names for everything. It would also solve the taro/yam/wootau confusion we had a little while ago.

Most chinese cookbooks are simply recipe compilations but her Modern Art of Chinese Cooking is one of the only Chinese cookbooks that goes into great detail on actual Chinese cooking techniques.