Chinese New Year Celebrations 2019

[Gillthepainter Profile Website]

Lemon Chicken. Absolutely lovely.

We had a meal from the excellent Bar Wok yesterday for lunch. Noodles, crispy pancakes, and tofu dishes.
Absolutely delightful.
A young artist who studied Chinese went to collect the order.

Twas excellent.

[Lusciouslush Profile]

Best laid plan & all that...……...no dumplings here last night - or pancakes - but good ol' chicken & blk bean noodles, didn't have time to make anything else! I don't visit sunflower's site half as much as I used to, but that lemon chicken has given me a kick - it looks so good.

What a mix of animals we are here - I am a snake - a water snake....hissssssssssssssssssss!

[Sakkarin Profile]

That's it, I didn't have a photo of homemade chicken and cashew nuts so here's today's cooking, back to non-Chinese food tomorrow! I'm afraid I am double sheep, astrological and Chinese animalish.

This pic is 2009 style with sharpened foreground and blurred background, the chicken and black bean pic was 2019 style, hyper realistic and over saturated.

[Renee Profile]

Absolutely gorgeous Sakkarin!

[Gillthepainter Profile Website]

Why is the Water Dragon so auspicious, may I enquire?
The chinese student at our school says you have to wear something red, every day if it is your chinese year.

That looks so good, Sakkarin.

[jeral Profile]

Sakkarin, that's one of my favourites to make or as takeaway (except using king prawn or cashews instead of chicken). The bought ones tend to use a lot of fresh green chilli slices rather than spring onion and has I think bamboo is it?, flat whitish crunchy oblongs. At home, I add fresh or tinned baby sweetcorns. I usually serve angel hair rice noodles tossed in a spot of toasted sesame oil if just for me (not as filling).

Misc:
How did you groove the carrots, or are they stamped out? Ta.
Talking of which, I saw a handy tip of using an apple corer for woody big parsnips.

Renée asked when to add beansprouts to broth. I read a few seemingly authentic Korean recipes and counter-intuitively they all involved sauteeing the flavourings first, adding stock, then beansprouts once broth at boiling point, then simmering for 4-7 mins (depending on recipe).

As I mentioned that the soup was meant to keep for 2-3 days in a fridge, I found that even reheated the beanspouts in the soup still had bite. I can only assume that frying is c.twice the heat temp of tremble simmering hence their not going soggy. My instinct when frying them is definitely to hold a few back in case I cleverly manage to soggify the others...

[Pampy Profile]

The bought ones tend to use a lot of fresh green chilli slices rather than spring onion and has I think bamboo is it?, flat whitish crunchy oblongs.

If the "flat white crunchy oblongs" are yellowish, they'll be bamboo shoots; if they're white, I'd imagine they'd be sliced water chestnuts.

[Joanbunting Profile]

We went shopping this morning because there is essentially no market tomorrow. We found a lovely chilled section with very good looking chilled dim sum so now have a selction to continue the celebrations over the weekend.

[Sakkarin Profile]

How did you groove the carrots...?

It's called "canelling", technically you would use a canelle knife, but If you have a zester, you probably already have the tool for the job, as they usually have a canelle cutter on the back, it's the sort of notchy looking things. I have a grapefruit peeler which has one too. You cut parallel grooves the length of the carrot with it, then slice as normal. It makes pretty cucumber slices too.

EDIT: Pic 2: Hainanese Chicken with canelled cucumber (the dressing pickles the cucumber...)...

[Alexandria Profile]

Sakkarin,

Lovely ..

[Stokey Sue Profile]

My old zester (Brabantia) had the hook for cancelling
The new one (Oxo Good Grips) is a better zester but came without the hook
This seems to be an Oxo thing, not giving you the second part of the tool. I have the apple corer, which is excellent but lacks the usual built in peeler

Small kitchen tools seem to go missing in this house. I blame the mice but I probably discard them with peelings. One advantage of those big black Oxo handles is that they are hard to hide

[Joanbunting Profile]

I use a fork with faily wide tines and just run it down the cucumber.

[Sakkarin Profile]

P.S. Actually come to think of it, I have no idea why I've got a grapefruit peeler. I never eat grapefruit, and I certainly don't need a peeler to peel one...

I guess it was that wicked "impulse buying" pixie, way back in the era before my current memories kick in.

[Renee Profile]

A few photos from the Chinese New Year celebrations in Manchester:

[Joanbunting Profile]

Lovely picture Renee. I saw on the NE news last evening - I do watch it from time to time - the pictures of the celebrations in Newcastle loads of lettuce eating dragons and looked such fun. Made me feel quite nostalgic,

[Gillthepainter Profile Website]

Such special fun, Renee.

That's the rice meal?

[Renee Profile]

I had king prawns with saffron sauce and fried rice as a side, Gill. A small glass of Sauvignon was £8.50.

[Alexandria Profile]

Renée,

Extraordinarily lovely photographs !!

Have a lovely day ..

[Renee Profile]

Thank you for all your kind remarks!

[Gillthepainter Profile Website]

How much???
that will count as a memorable glass of wine for the wrong reasons.