Chinese New Years After Action Report

Now that Chinese New Years has been over for almost a month, I have found the spare time to finally tell y'all how the big New Years party went. However, since it has been so long, I have forgotten everything other than a whole lot of family and friends came over and there was the playing of majiang, the eating of food, and much talk about exciting subjects like fiber intake and law school selection. Yes, that's right, fiber. My aunt and I talked about fiber and nutrition for well over an hour to the puzzlement of everyone else in the room who didn't share our concern for food.

Other than that, the rest of that day was forgotten. Luckily, I had enough foresight to photograph the event (well, the food, at least)...


From 12'oclock in this picture, we have Chinese buns, spring rolls, egg tarts, and oversized Indonesian shrimp chips. The circular box in the center has an assortment of candied fruits that seem to only show up around Chinese New Years.


This is what we had for dinner. White rice, spare ribs, stir fried vegetables, shredded pork, crab, chicken, mushrooms (recipe on this blog), shrimp, tofu, roast pork, pig's feet, and duck.

Lastly, we have some desserts. Picture is a sweet red bean soup, flan, carrot cake, and tiramisu.
The tiramisu, though not firm enough, tasted great. The flan was made by a family friend who specializes in baking desserts and it was absolutely delicious.

Hopefully, I will be posting on this blog more often in the future. I'll likely have another recipe up by the end of the week.

Chinese New Years - Spring Rolls

Chinese New Years is over, but the recipes are still fresh in my mind just as the food is stuck in my bowels. Just kidding, I shit like four times a day. Horray for whole grains. Today, I'll show all of you good folks how to make a batch of spring rolls.


Spring Rolls （春卷, Mandarin: chun1 juan3, Cantonese: ceon1 gyun2)

Ingredients: Spring Roll Wrappers, Cooking Oil, Eggs, Cabbage, Dried Shitake Mushrooms, Roast Pork, Mung Bean Sprouts, Water Chestnuts, Snow Peas, Salt, Soy Sauce, White Pepper

Let's prepare the filling first. The ingredient that will compose the plurality of the filling is cabbage. Cut the cabbage into thin strips and set it aside. While you're in the chopping mood, take some of those dried shitake mushrooms from last time and soak them in water for a half hour and rinse. Chop them up into thin strips along with some snow peas, roast pork, mung bean sprouts, and water chestnuts. You can use whatever you want in the filling, but this is how things are done in my parts.

Let me take some time to introduce some potentially unfamiliar ingredients. The first picture below show what mung bean sprouts (left) and water chestnuts (right) look like. Mung bean sprouts look similar to soy bean sprouts, but are thicker. The water chestnuts need to be washed, since they are often covered in dirt, and peeled. They have a very pleasant sweet taste to them. Both these vegetables (?) give the filling of the spring rolls a nice crunch to them and crunch is always good.

Mung Bean Sprouts (left) and Water Chestnuts (right)

Peeled Water Chestnuts Being Chopped

Rehydrated Dried Shitakes, Roast Pork, More Roast Pork, and Snow Peas

Cook the cabbage and mushrooms in a wok with some water until they're partially cooked. These things take the longest to cook. That's why they go in first. Next, we add the roast pork and snow peas. At this point, mix in some soy sauce, salt, and white pepper to taste. Lastly, mix in the water chestnuts and mung bean sprouts. They cook really quickly so we add them last.

Alright, the filling is now done. Set it aside as we get out our spring roll wraps. Open up the package and carefully separate each wrapping from each other and put them all in a pile. Beat a couple eggs in a small bowl. We'll use the egg to help keep the spring roll wrappers closed when we fry them up.



Now, we take some of the filling and place it one quadrant of the wrapper, leaving ample space around the edges. Roll the edge that is closest to the filling towards the other end. Once you get to the middle, fold the two side edges inward and then complete the roll. Use the egg wash to glue the loose flap at the end to the spring roll.



Now, we're ready to fry. Get yourself pot, fill that sucker with oil and turn up the heat. We used canola oil since we're cheap and it works just fine. Find a plate or pan for you to put the finished spring rolls on and put a couple layers of paper towel on the bottom to absorb any excess oil. Drop the spring rolls into the oil and wait for them to turn golden brown. Take them out, letting the excess oil drain back into the pot and set them down on your plate/pan. Repeat. Before you know it, you have yourself a whole lot of spring rolls! In our case, we made around 90 of them. You'd think that would be a lot, but after our not so little New Year's gathering, they were more or less gone.

A Lot of Oil (Above and Below)

Oh deep frying, the method of cooking that touches the heart in more ways that one. Things that are deep fried are generally delicious and these spring rolls are no exception. Just be aware that they aren't terribly good for you so you don't attempt to eat six of them at once for lunch or something like that. Speaking of which, I wonder how many of these Joey Chestnut could eat...

Chinese New Year - Stewed Mushrooms

It's a very special time of year right now. But Steve, the celebration of the birth of our Lord and Savoir, Jesus Christ is over and so is New Years. What are you talking about? Is it Black History Month?

Well, Black History Month is indeed very special, but it isn't quite here yet. No, my friends, it's Chinese New Years!

What is Chinese New Years about? Getting little red packets stuffed with cash while being guilt tripped on how you don't make enough money? Your grandma yelling at you for not being married? Every family member you know above the age of 40 telling you that you go find a Chinese girl lest you wallow in the misery of a life without "properly" prepared Chinese cuisine (which is considerably less awkward for me now considering I no longer have a white girlfriend)?

Yes, these are essentially the most important parts of Chinese New Years and indeed were the reasons why the holiday was originally celebrated in China over 50,000 years ago. However, though these things fill my breast with joy, when I think of Chinese New Years, I think about the food (inb4 twinkie, banana, etc).

Now, my mom is very secretive about her recipes, telling them to only a select group of people. In fact, she is so secretive about them, she cannot even accurately convey how to make the dishes to those such as myself who are trusted with this most valuable information. So, for posterity's sake, I will record, step by step, how to make some of these delicious recipes. This task is all the more important as I will need to be able to replicate these dishes to ward off the painful homesickness I will likely experience during law school. Also, in the event I marry a non-Chinese girl, this will larn her good.

The first thing we will make is...


Stewed Mushrooms
(approximate Cantonese romanization: meng dong gu)

Ingredients: Dried Shitake Mushrooms, Corn starch, Bean Paste, Pork Chop, Smoked Ham Hocks, Chinese Dried Scallops, Soy Sauce, Salt, Ginger, Garlic, Dried Tangerine Peels, Rock Sugar, Oyster Sauce, Cooking Oil

We start with this lovely barrel of dried shitake mushrooms. Look how lovely they are:


Next, we soak the mushrooms in water so that they rehydrate. Then, we rinse them a few times to get all the dirt and such out of there. Make sure you cut off the stems so they look purdy.


Since we're being Chinese, we need to add cornstarch. In our case, we added about 5 tablespoons of the stuff. Mix all the mushrooms so that they all get coated and let it sit for 30 minutes. Then, rinse away the cornstarch. I don't know how, but this is supposed to make the mushrooms have a smoother texture.


Whip out your wok, cause these mushrooms are ready to be cooked! But wait! We need to bring some flavor for this party first. Take your wok and add some oil to it. Bring the heat up to high and wait for the oil to get hot. Now, we add some sliced ginger, garlic cloves, and dried tangerine peels (soak before use). Brown them until the aroma starts getting out. Doesn't that smell good?


Once everything's a-browning and the armoa's a-releasing, add some (soya?) bean paste and the mushrooms. Add some water so the stuff doesn't stick to the bottom of the wok and some soy sauce and salt. Don't go overboard since we'll be adding more seasonings and sauces later.


Once you've tossed it around for a bit, transfer everything into a pot. Add water until everything is almost covered. Now, throw in a bunch of meat. In our case, we used a pork chop, 2 smoked ham hocks, and some Chinese dried scallops. Now, these dried scallops are called conpoy and these small ones cost $30/lb! I have tried to find out how to make these suckers myself so I can forgo my career in law and go into the lucritive scallop drying business, but I can't seem to find how they're made anywhere in the 10 minutes I spent looking online.

Anyways, back to cooking. Add some rock sugar for some sweetness and cover the pot, set the heat to high, and let the water boil. When the water starts boiling, lower the heat to medium and cook for an additional 1.5hrs or so depending on how much you have. Add more water in the unlikely event that everything gets dried up.


Once time's up, mix everything up with some oyster sauce and add some more corn starch to thicken the remaining liquid into a gravy. Oh, and don't forget the MSG! Just kidding! ; )


And voila, you have yourself a big mess of stewed mushrooms! They may not look terribly appetizing at first, but believe me, they're terribly damn tasty. The flavor of the mushrooms themselves is relatively subdued, but what really carries it is the flavor of the oyster sauce, meat, and dried scallops. The mushrooms are tender and melt in your mouth.

By now, you may have figured out that I'm living at home, cause I'm cool like that. In any case, I will try to document as many of my mom's recipes as possible. They probably won't be posted or even tested in time for Chinese New Years, but like I said, I'm doing this for posterity. I hope you learned something from this and perhaps you will try this and future recipes in your kitchen. I'll also make some noninstructional posts by and by and hopefully, they won't be too dull or poorly written. Anyways, 恭喜发财！ 新年快乐! Now hand me some money, bitch!

Edit - Here is a picture of the finished product: