Chinese New Year Dinner

This morning I decided we should do something to celebrate the Chinese New Year, since we haven't done anything yet, and what better way to celebrate than with food. I decided to make an authentic Chinese dinner, at least as authentic as it can be without me being Chinese. I do have a cookbook that has authentic Chinese recipes in it. It is called The Chinese Kitchen by Eileen Yin-Fei Lo. It is the only Chinese cookbook I have so I don't have a lot to compare it to, but it seems like a great book to me. It talks about Chinese cooking and gives a description of the different ingredients that are used and where you can get them. A lot of the recipes require a trip to an Asian market and they are fairly complicated. I picked out several recipes that didn't require special ingredients and seemed fairly easy.

I love to cook, and I think I'm pretty good at it, but I get a little stressed out when I'm trying to do a bunch of new recipes at once. I only screwed up a couple of times, and Mike only had to run back to the grocery store once. Now the kitchen is a disaster, but it was totally worth it. I can easily say that since Mike will be cleaning the kitchen!

Here is our menu for the night:

Egg Drop Soup (Don Far Tong) - This was the easiest recipe ever. It only has four ingredients (chicken broth, salt, eggs and green onions) and it was delicious. I will definitely make this again.

Shanghai Potsticker Dumplings (Wor Tip) with Vinegar Soy Sauce (See Cho Yau) - This was the hardest recipe. I've made this one once before so I knew how time consuming but delicious it is. When Mike was doing the grocery shopping he couldn't find commercial dumpling skins so I made mine from scratch. It was a major pain in the butt. Having pre-made dumpling skins would make preparing these so much easier. The cookbook says, "A little bit of folklore suggests that these dumplings were created by accident when one day an imperial chef, making dumplings, forgot them on his stove and they burned on one side. The chef, fearing punishment, admitted no mistake but said rather that he had created a new dish." These were Carson's favorite. I will definitely make these again, but will try to find commercial dumpling skins first. These are a great appetizer.

Longevity Noodles (Cheung Sau Jai Mien) - These were very good and pretty easy to make. I only screwed up once on this one, causing Mike to have to run to the grocery store, but it all worked out in the end. They were Amaya's favorite. I will make these again.

Sweet-and-Sour Pork ( Wu Loh Yuk) - This was surprisingly easy. According to the cookbook, this recipe is as it is traditionally prepared in China, especially Hong Kong, and is not an overly sweet dish with gluelike sauce, like what you get in America. I only messed up once on this one, by cooking the pork before putting the batter on. The pork is cooked twice, however, so before cooking it the second time I put the batter on and it turned out great. I love sweet-and-sour pork. This was Hayden's favorite. I will definitely make this again. I honestly think this was better than any sweet-and-sour pork I've had in a restaurant. It seems like whenever I have it from a restaurant the pork is rather tough, but this was just right.

I loved all of it. I love Chinese food and food-wise I was in Heaven when we were in China. I can't wait to make more recipes from this book. I have yet to venture out into a Chinese market, but I definitely need to in order to make a lot of the recipes from this book.

Overall I'd say that our dinner was a success.

Darn, just as I was typing that I realize I forgot to make the dessert I was going to make: Fried Fragrant Bananas (Jah Heung Jiu). I guess it's for the best since we were all stuffed after eating. We'll have that another night this week.

By the way, I did take pictures but it was with my 35mm camera because my digital camera's battery is dead. If I get them developed in the next week or so I'll post them.

Happy Chinese New Year.