MessyCuisine

Year of the Rat Dinner

For this year’s Chinese New Year, we made a variety of dishes we decided upon earlier this week.

• Scallion Pancakes
• Egg Drop Soup
• Fried Dumplings
• 8-Treasure Rice Dessert

I used all the right ingredients, but strayed too far on the technique. These were lackluster, for sure. But the sauce I made was delicious. I used reduced soy sauce, balsamic glaze, sesame oil, and garlic-chili sauce to make a nice and thick pancake sauce.

By using too much Crisco, they fell apart easily.

Expert dumpling makers were called upon to fill dumpling wrappers. I never found what was inside; but they tasted great. We added a second sauce for dipping, this one with spicy peppers, more sesame oil, sherry vinegar, and a dash of soy. The special ingredient was Hoisin sauce.

The filling had vegetables and pork inside.

For the egg drop soup, we used a rich chicken stock with cornstarch, ginger, and eggs.

You can garnish the soup with scallions.

We ate the soup and pancakes first, then took a break while the dumplings were cooked.

After pan-frying the dumplings, add water to steam them to complete the cooking process.

Cover them with the sauces we made both for the pancakes, and the second variation, mentioned above.

Finally, for dessert, we made a so-called “eight treasure rice.” This is sweet rice combined with various dried fruits and red bean paste, that is then steamed into a mould shape.

Individual slices/scoops were then served to each guest.

Happy Chinese New Year!

Filed by MessyChef at February 9th, 2008 under Asian, In the Kitchen