Birthday dinner, fam style

My family made a lovely birthday dinner for me and we enjoyed it with some out-of-town relatives. Lots of awesome Chinese food that I rarely get to eat, so it was definitely a major treat.

Cold noodles. They have to be long because it's a birthday meal and they promote longevity or wealth or many male babies or something like that. Toss in some sliced cucumber, egg, bean sprouts, and a sesame sauce and some yummy green onion/garlic/ginger concoction.



Here's mamacita showing us how to plate it.



A traditional "appetizer" platter at a Chinese banquet. Tea eggs, beef tendon, baked tofu, you know, all the normal stuff you eat daily.



Tsong yo bing. Basically scallion pancakes, but these are way better than any you'll find anywhere. Could eat about a million and a half of these and get really fat.



I call these "Chinese Empanadas". They're meat-filled. I ate leftovers for lunch for about a week. yum.



Me and the kiddos with my Kings Hawaiian cake. you know, the three-layered kind. (yes, I am still not eating sugar. everyone else loved the cake. haha)

What to do with those little packets they give you when you get Pho takeout.

I'm somewhat of a pho purist. I don't like to taint my perfectly seasoned broth with more than the requisite thai basil, sprouts, and hearty dose of lime juice. You'll never see me grab for the squeezy bottles of hoisin and chili sauce. So, when I get pho takeout, those individual ketchup-sized packets of hoisin and chili sauces just get thrown into the "take-out junk drawer" alongside flimsy plastic knives that can cut through stuff as well as elementary school scissors.

As I've been really into the joys of Chinese cooking (and my new 12" omelette pan), I had an epiphany to saucing up a recent stir-fry experience: use the damn take-out sauces! That's right, I took one hoisin packet and one chili sauce packet (that they give you with Le Saigon pho takeout), snipped off the tops, and squeezed those suckers right into my stir-fry. A couple of quick pan flips et voila! Tastes just like kung pao! (click on photo for an up close and personal look)



"Take out drawer" Kung Pao
1 lb chicken breast tenders, chopped, lightly floured and doused in soy sauce
sliced red bell peppers
1/2 sliced onion
chopped snow peas
1 sliced red chili (for extra heat if needed... I felt like going extra spicy here)
roasted peanuts
1 packet each: hoisin sauce, chili sauce

It's stir-fry, so I did this all over high-high heat with some grapeseed oil. Chicken went in first to get a quick glaze, quickly followed by the peppers and onions. Snow peas need a bit less time to cook, so they went in about a minute later. Last 20 seconds of cooking, I threw in the peanuts and sauces, gave the whole thing a couple of quick pan flips, and moved to the serving dish (after snapping a quick photo). Serve over rice, of course.

Trio of Chinese Dishes

After a lovely outing with Mom to Ranch 99 Market (Chinese supermarket extraordinaire), I decided to cook a lot of Chinese food. Tyson and I ate a spread for lunch, and the rest went into tupperware for later.

All dishes cooked stir-fry style: high heat, a dollop or two of grapeseed oil, and a big ol' saute pan to prevent overcrowding and steaming of ingredients. I didn't even use a spatula... just the good ol' pan flip. I know, I'm pro.



Chicken and Potato
Sliced red potatoes (par-boiled) tossed with soy sauce-soaked chicken strips, onion crescents, and sliced carrots. Finish with a dash of soy sauce.

Cashew Chicken
Same soy sauce-soaked chicken strips as above, sliced red bell peppers, chopped sugar snap peas, raw cashews, and some Black Bean Garlic Sauce. (cashews were on the soft side... any tips on how to crisp those up w/o deep frying?)

One of the only vegetarian Chinese dishes I know
Tofu sheets, pickled mustard greens, soybeans, and shitake mushrooms (reconstituted dried). Finish with a dash of soy sauce.

Brown rice
I read this prep method in a cooking magazine, and it worked really well! I couldn't really remember the exact measurements, and my oven only sets to 400, so I altered it a bit.

Measure out 1 1/2 cups brown rice in a pyrex. Add 2 1/3 cups of boiling water and a drizzle of oil. Cover tightly with foil and bake in the oven for ~50 min. (this way, you get cooked brown rice without the scorching at the bottom)

Round Eye Hot Pot

Tyson named it. He's the one that likes to throw in non-culturally sensitive labelling terms. But I guess it does kind of describe it perfectly. By the way, the non-PC labelling term is not only not meant to be offensive, but rather humorous as Tyson's eyes are smaller than mine.

So, as Tyson's mom was coming back into town for a quick dinner, and her experience of Asian cuisines spans the realms of sushi and Chin Chin, and the weather was still chilly-for-LA, we decided to do a Hot Pot event. Well, MY version of Hot Pot, which is technically somewhat of a Shabu Shabu/Broth Fondue/Hot Pot hybrid. Being of Chinese descent, I really think that I should call it Hot Pot, and I do serve Chinese Sesame Paste with zero english writing on the jar. But the process of Hot Pot just isn't as refined as Shabu Shabu, with its delicate dipping of one thinly sliced strip of marbled beef into the boiling broth at a time, rather than the more practical but a bit too zooey for my taste throw-it-all-in-at-the-risk-of-overload technique. I throw in the Broth Fondue title, since I do use chicken broth as a base rather than the awesome but hard-to-find kelp stuff.

Round Eye Hot Pot, which is just Hot Pot minus the stuff that grosses mei guo ren out.



ingredient list:

sauces: sesame paste, sesame oil, ponzu sauce... I just mix them all together.

proteins: sliced sirloin (I think), sliced pork, tofu

veggies: napa cabbage, baby spinach, shitakes, enoki mushrooms,

starches: sweet potatoes, udon noodles