Posts Tagged ‘Chinese New Year recipes’

Meredith’s Easy Moo Shu Pork

Monday, March 2nd, 2015
Michaelweb

My nephew Michael at a recent hockey game. Teenagers get cold and HUNGRY.

My family and I were going through some of my mother’s old files this past weekend, and my brother David chuckled as he ran across one of my report cards from Sixth Grade. He reported that the teachers seemed to like me but that I had apparently needed improvement in posture (I still need it!) and punctuality.

With this history of tardiness perhaps it’s no surprise that I fed David and Company their Chinese New Year feast a bit belatedly, just a few days ago in fact.

The formula for our meal came courtesy of Meredith Deeds. Meredith is a chef and cookbook author who recently published a recipe for Moo Shu Pork in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, encouraging readers to experiment with different international cuisines.

My nephew Michael happens to love LOVE Moo Shu Pork. (Well, who doesn’t?) I don’t usually repost other writers’ recipes, but Meredith’s was such a hit with my family that I asked her whether I could use this one. She graciously gave her permission.

Unfortunately, Michael refuses to believe that Moo Shu can be served without pancakes so I used tortillas instead of the lighter lettuce leaves Meredith prefers. Maybe over time I’ll convert him to the lettuce leaves. More likely, I’ll end up going to a specialty market and purchasing Chinese pancakes.

Everything else in the recipe was available at the mid-sized supermarket I visited.

mise en placeweb

If you’re a Moo Shu fan, do try Meredith’s recipe. It’s easy, and it’s fresh (all those vegetables!). And you’ll feed the whole family for little more than you’d pay for one serving of this dish in a restaurant. Note: the pork is easier to slice if you pop it in the freezer for 20 minutes or so before you deal with it.

moo shu in bowlweb

The Moo Shu

Ingredients:

1 tablespoon hoisin sauce, plus more for serving
3 tablespoons rice vinegar
1 (3/4-pound) pork tenderloin, trimmed, cut in half lengthwise and sliced into thin strips
1 teaspoon plus 2 tablespoons vegetable or canola oil, divided
2 eggs
1 pinch of salt
10 ounces shiitake mushrooms, stemmed and sliced thinly (I had some button mushrooms in my fridge so I ended up using those and augmenting them with shiitakes.)
1/2 cup shredded carrots
1 (10-ounce) bag finely cut coleslaw (without dressing). You may of course shred your own cabbage in season, but it’s awfully easy to purchase it shredded!
1 bunch green onions, trimmed and thinly sliced
16 Bibb lettuce leaves or small flour tortillas as needed

Instructions:

Whisk the hoisin sauce and vinegar together in a medium bowl. Add the pork and marinate for at least 10 minutes. (I got distracted and ended up marinating it for more than an hour. It was still terrific.)

Heat 1 teaspoon oil in a wok or large skillet over medium-high heat. Whisk together the eggs and the salt in a small bowl. Add the egg mixture to the hot wok and stir until the eggs are just set. Transfer the eggs to a plate, and cut them into thin strips. Wipe out the pan.

Heat 1 tablespoon oil in the same wok or skillet over high heat. Remove the pork from the marinade; allow the excess marinade to drip off (reserving the remaining marinade). Stir-fry the pork until it browns, about 3 minutes. Transfer the pork and any liquid in the wok or skillet to a plate or bowl.

Add the remaining 1 tablespoon vegetable oil to the skillet; when it is hot, add the mushrooms and stir-fry until slightly golden, about 2 minutes. Add the carrots and the coleslaw and cook until wilted, about 3 minutes. Add the pork, the reserved marinade, and the green onions; stir-fry 2 more minutes. Toss the pieces of egg into the mixture at the last minute.

Serve the stir-fry in the lettuce leaves or the tortillas, with more hoisin sauce OF COURSE.

Meredith says that this dish serves 6. When one of those 6 is a hungry teenager who loves Moo Shu and stuffs his pancake VERY full, it may serve only 5!

No, it isn't the pork I'm sniffing in this photo--but I couldn't find my hat so I used an older photo. I DID want you to see me in my faux Chinese regalia.

No, it isn’t the pork I’m sniffing in this photo–but I couldn’t find my hat so I used an older image. I DID want you to see me in my faux Chinese regalia.

A Little More Moo Goo Gai Pan

Friday, February 12th, 2010
Bob Newhart (Courtesy of the William Morris Agency)

Bob Newhart (Courtesy of the William Morris Agency)

 
 
I am making Moo Goo Gai Pan for the Chinese New Year. The Year of the Tiger starts this Sunday, February 14 (maybe the tiger will wear pink hearts?).
 
Moo Goo Gai Pan, a Cantonese chicken-and-mushroom dish, isn’t necessarily classic new-year fare. It isn’t even my favorite Chinese recipe. Although I like its gentle balance of flavors I tend to prefer spicy Chinese food.
 
I’m serving Moo Goo Gai Pan because I’ve been watching The Bob Newhart Show lately.
 
I have never been a fan of physical humor. Much of it is based on pain or at the very least embarrassment. I cringe at my nephew Michael’s most recent passion, the Three Stooges. To a nine-year-old boy hitting someone over the head with a giant mallet ranks as the epitome of funny, but it leaves me cold.
 
Verbal humor, on the other hand, I have appreciated since I began understanding language. A clever pun or a flight of wordful whimsy tickles my fancy more than all the slipped-upon banana peels in the world.
 
As a result I’m fond of Bob Newhart. An early stand-up (and recording) comedy star who went on to play the lead in two successful televised situation comedies, Newhart doesn’t launch his humor with his body or his facial expressions. His face tends to be blank no matter what he’s saying or reacting to.
 
He just stands there and delivers deadpan lines. And we laugh.
 
Newhart’s characters tend to be everymen, folks with whom any of us can identify. In one of his earliest routines he portrayed a hapless security guard at the Empire State Building trying to deal with the arrival of King Kong.
 
On The Bob Newhart Show his character, Bob Hartley, is a psychologist but not a know-it-all. Bob listens patiently to his slightly neurotic patients, to his wife, to his friends, and to anonymous bureaucrats on the other side of a telephone line.
 
He doesn’t always understand them, and they don’t always understand him, but the conversation continues. It’s always worth listening to.
 
One of the best remembered episodes of this series is “Over the River and Through the Woods,” which aired in November 1975, during the show’s fourth season.
 
We are now used to television programs that have multiple, intertwined plots. “Over the River,” like most episodes of its era, revolves around only one basic plot. Bob Hartley’s wife Emily decides to go to a family reunion for Thanksgiving, and Bob elects to stay home.
 
He and his lonely buddies (all regular characters) gather at the Hartley apartment to spend the day together watching football on television. They can’t cook, but they can drink from the jug of vodka and cider Jerry the Orthodontist has brought to the party.
 
Jerry is a graduate of William and Mary, and his alma mater’s team has an important football game scheduled on Thanksgiving. He shares with his friends the William and Mary tradition of taking a swig from the jug every time the opposition scores. The opposition scores a lot in this particular game.
 
The men gathered in the Hartleys’ apartment finish the day drunk, with a small frozen turkey still stowed away in the dishwasher (yes, the dishwasher).
 
In order to counterbalance the abundance of alcohol in their system they order Chinese food. Bob calls the House of Hu and places multiple orders for Moo Goo Gai Pan. At the end of the program the bill comes to almost $100, a sizeable sum for take-out in 1975.
 
The plot doesn’t sound like much, and it isn’t. What works in this episode, as it does in so many of the programs put out by the MTM production company in the 1970s, is the careful combination of writing and acting that makes the characters at once funny and very real.
 
One feels as though one knows them. I’ve never gotten drunk on Thanksgiving (although I’ve often had a hankering for Chinese food!). I empathize with the endearing characters sitting around Bob’s living room watching football and trading bad jokes, however. We’ve all had holidays that didn’t quite work out as planned—and we’ve all shared strange as well as happy days with our friends.
 
If you’d like to see Bob Newhart, director James Burrows, and other colleagues reminisce about the “Moo Goo Gai Pan” episode of the The Bob Newhart Show, visit TV Land’s clip from the Archive of American Television’s tribute to the show’s 35h anniversary.
 
And this Chinese New Year please join me in a little Moo Goo Gai Pan.
 
At eighty Bob Newhart, bless him, is still touring the country doing comedy and answering his own fan mail.
 
Let’s raise a glass of cider and vodka—well, maybe just cider–to him, to his writers, to his fellow actors, and to the little MTM kitten that (in homage to Leo the MGM Lion) meowed at the end of every MTM production.
 
Moo Goo Gai Pan web
 
Moo Goo Gai Pan
 
Ingredients:
 
for the marinade:
 
1 teaspoon salt
pepper to taste
2 egg whites
6 tablespoons water
2 tablespoons cornstarch
2 tablespoons peanut oil
 
for the sauce:
 
6 green onions, chopped (the white part plus a little of the green)
1 teaspoon minced fresh ginger
1-1/2 cups strong chicken broth (you may want to add a bouillon cube to your broth to make it stronger)
3-1/2 tablespoons dry sherry
1/2 teaspoon salt
pepper to taste
1 teaspoon sugar
2 tablespoons cornstarch paste (cornstarch dissolved in JUST enough water to make a paste)
 
for assembly:
 
2 boned, skinned chicken breasts, sliced as thinly as possible
peanut oil as needed for frying
6 ounces mushrooms (oriental mushrooms such as shitakes work best), sliced
1/2 pound snow peas, ends trimmed
a few pieces baby corn if you have them
 
Instructions:
 
In 2 different medium-sized bowls combine the marinade and the sauce. Place the chicken pieces in the marinade and leave them for at least 1/2 hour.
 
In a wok or similar wide frying pan pour enough peanut oil to make a little pool—probably at least a cup. Heat the oil over high heat until it shimmers. Add the chicken a few pieces at a time. Blanch the pieces—that is cook them on the outside, but don’t worry about browning them.
 
Remove the chicken, turn off the heat, and put the mushrooms, snow peas, and baby corn pieces into the oil. Blanch for about 15 seconds; then remove and drain.
 
If you have more than 2 of tablespoons oil left in your wok, pour all but 2 tablespoons out. If you need more to make 2 tablespoons, add it.
 
Turn the heat on again to high and pour the sauce into the pan. Cook it until it thickens. Add the chicken and vegetables, and cook, tossing, until the chicken is cooked through and everything is moistened—a minute or two.
 
Serve with rice. Serves 6.
This statue in downtown Chicago honors the character of Bob Hartley. It comes complete with a couch on which passersby can recline. (Courtesy of TV Land)

This statue in downtown Chicago honors the character of Bob Hartley. It comes complete with a couch on which passersby can recline. (Courtesy of TV Land)

 

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Nibbling with the Oxen

Saturday, January 24th, 2009

tinkybean2web2

Welcome to the Year of the Ox!

The Chinese New Year starts on Monday, January 26. Naturally, I’m thinking FOOD. We don’t have a Chinese restaurant in Hawley, Massachusetts, so I have to make my own fare. Despite our lack of Chinese restaurants, Hawley is a perfect place in which to celebrate the year of the ox. In New England oxen still do agricultural work. Ox pulls are major draws at our local fairs.

I know dumplings are a traditional New Year’s dish, and I plan to make them … next year! This year I’m concentrating on a couple of old standbys. Noodles are lucky for the Chinese New Year so I’m working on my friend Stu Cosby’s Sesame Noodles. I’m also serving spicy green beans because they go nicely with the noodles–and because I love beans any time.

noodles1web

Sesame Noodles

Ingredients:

8 ounces Chinese noodles (you may use spaghetti in a pinch)
3 tablespoons peanut butter (I used crunchy)
3 scallions, chopped
2 tablespoons light soy sauce (you may use regular if you don’t have light)
2 tablespoons sesame oil
2 tablespoons rice wine vinegar
2 teaspoons sugar
1 teaspoon hot oil
2 carrots, cut into julienne strips
1 cucumber, seeded and cut into julienne strips

Instructions:

Cook the noodles as directed. Drain them. Heat the peanut butter in a microwave oven just until it is soft and stir-able. Combine it with the scallions, soy sauce, sesame oil, vinegar, sugar, and hot oil. Mix until smooth.

Toss the noodles and sauce together. Place them on a platter or in a bowl. Garnish with carrot and cucumber strips. Serves 6 to 8.

 

beanscookingweb

Spicy Green Beans

Ingredients:

1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon cornstarch
1 tablespoon water
2 teaspoons sherry
peanut oil as needed for frying
1 pound green beans, washed and trimmed
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes (more if you like things spicy)
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1 tablespoon minced ginger
2 scallions, chopped

Instructions:

In a small bowl, combine the soy sauce, sugar, cornstarch, water, and sherry. Set aside.

Heat the oil in a wok or frying pan. Stir fry the beans for about 5 minutes or until they begin to brown. About a minute before you think they will be done, toss on the red pepper flakes.

Remove the beans from the pan, and add the garlic, ginger, and scallions. Stir fry for 1 minute; then add the beans and the soy/sherry sauce. Stir fry briefly-just until the sauce is warmed. Remove to a platter. Serves 6.