Chinese New Year in Kingston – January 26, 2009

*This is what a REAL Chinese New Year spread looks like.*

In my rush to catch up on my posts, I realized suddenly that I forgot about this set of photos.



Starting clockwise from top-left: fried chow mein, chopped green onions and cilantro for garnishing, sliced garlic and soy sauce for dipping dumplings, fried rice, broccoli-carrot-baby corn stir fry, bottle of oyster sauce, boiled dumplings, pan-fried dumplings, straw mushrooms-baby corn-celery stir fry, and bottle of soy sauce.

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Chow Mein



1 package chow mein noodles
2 tbsp vegetable oil
½ medium onion, sliced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1-2 tbsp oyster sauce

I boiled a package of chow mein noodles until it was tender. I drained it and set it aside. In a large pan, heat up the vegetable oil on medium. Toss in the garlic and onion, and fry until it starts becoming fragrant. Then add in the drained noodles and constantly mix it around for five minutes on high heat. Continue to fry the noodles until some parts get toasted and brown. Add the oyster sauce and stir vigorously. Garnish with chopped cilantro and green onions.

The chow mein is pretty simple to make, and yet, I still managed to mess it up. The limited size of the stove (three small burners and only one large one) made it difficult to multitask the way I can on a full-sized stove. I cooked the noodles for far too long, and they became a soggy, sticky mess when I tried to fry it. I’ll have to do them in much smaller batches next time. Also, you’re actually supposed to fry it with chopped garlic chives and bean sprouts, but I forgot to buy them when I went grocery shopping that weekend.

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Garnish



Chopped cilantro and green onions is one of my favourite garnishes because that’s what we use at home when we celebrate occasions like Chinese New Year and the Mid-Autumn Festival. Once I add those garnishes, the food makes me a little less homesick.

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Garlic and Soy Sauce Dip



Jimmy grew up eating dumplings—actually, most things, now that I think about it—with soy sauce and chopped garlic. It might be a Taiwanese thing, but I guess I won’t know for sure until I go there.

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Fried Rice



I can’t remember what I put in it. I believe I just tossed together whatever I had on hand. From the picture, it looks like corn, peas, eggs, and ground pork.

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Broccoli Stir Fry



2 tsp vegetable oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 large carrot, sliced diagonally
1 head broccoli, chopped into bite-sized pieces
¼ cup baby corn (about half a can), drained and split in half
2 tbsp reserved baby corn water
1 tbsp oyster sauce
Salt to taste

Heat up the oil, and fry the garlic until fragrant. Toss in the carrots, and fry for at least three minutes, until tender. Add the broccoli and baby corn. Fry until they start seeping out water. Add the baby corn water and oyster sauce. Continue to stir fry until all of the vegetables are tender. Salt it to taste, and garnish.

This dish was okay. It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t bad. It needed some sort of punch to it. I think it may have been because I forgot to add chicken. Sadly, the chicken sat in the fridge until the next day.

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Boiled and Fried Dumplings



No recipe for these, since they didn’t turn out as planned at all. I accidentally used a bottle of pepper-salt instead of just pepper. The pepper-salt also had other spices in it, so it changed the flavour completely. They were far too salty, and had a weird clove-like smell. We ate them all anyways.



We boiled the dumplings first, and then pan-fried them. Despite the weird taste, there was only a small container left over.

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Straw Mushroom and Baby Corn Stir Fry



2 tsp vegetable oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
¼ cup sliced onions
1 can straw mushrooms, drained
2 stalks celery, sliced (about ¼ cup)
¼ cup baby corn (about half a can), drained and split in half
2 tbsp reserved baby corn water
1 tbsp oyster sauce
Salt to taste

Heat up the oil, and fry the garlic until fragrant. Toss in the onions. Once the onions start to brown, add the vegetables. Fry until they start seeping out water. Add the baby corn water and oyster sauce. Salt it to taste, and garnish.

I wasn’t too crazy about this dish either. I really should have sliced the mushrooms in half, but I forgot. This tasted much better the next day, after re-heating it on the stove.

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We also had some daikon and napa cabbage soup. I’m not going to bother with a recipe, since I just tossed stuff in.


Water
Chicken legs or thighs, bone in and skin on
Salt
Daikon, chopped
Carrots, chopped
Fried shrimp balls, cut in half
Fish balls, cut in half
Dried shrimp
Dried daikon

I started the soup the night before, so that I could skim off any excess fat after taking it out of the fridge. In my rush, I forgot to skim it all off before I tossed the vegetables and the rest of the ingredients into the soup. Crap. That’s why you see a whoooooooooooole lotta oil on the soup. We kinda forgot about the soup until halfway through the meal, so Jimmy was the only one who really ate it.

This was actually my first attempt at trying to make it like my grandmother, and it actually tasted right! I was so proud, but too full to eat it that night. I ate it the next day with a heaping bowl of steamed rice, and it felt like home.

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After all of this food, we were all too full to make glutinous rice balls for dessert. We made it a few days later, so I’ll make a separate post.

Next year, I’m definitely going to prep all of the vegetables and stuff in advance. It gets far too hectic trying to cook three things at once, while cutting up vegetables for another dish. It was nice that I had my cousin come over to help cook. I only wish I had more family over and a much bigger kitchen!