"Chinese" New Year's

This year for New Year's I thought it would be fun to share some of the "Chinese" goodies I have learned to make with my family and friends.  Harrison and I went on a big shopping spree to Hy-Vee to get all the goodies that we needed.  While looking through the crazy maze of this gigantic grocery store I made two observations....number 1 - produce in the US, well, at least in the Mid-West pales in comparison to that in the UK...I've been totally spoilt.  Number 2...I've switched to now feeling frustrated not being able to find things I can easily find in my UK grocery stores and now can't find in the US.  One of the dishes I wanted to make is called Aromatic Crispy Duck and I searched everywhere for the pancakes used to wrap up all the goodies.  After some confusing discussions with a random group of Asian folks in Hy-Vee and the employees of the Oriental Supermarket that I went to, we concluded that this "English-developed" Chinese dish is similar to Peking Duck, but no one knows what I'm talking about with these pancakes.  So going along with my motto, if you can't buy it, why not make it!!!  I found a recipe for Chinese pancakes so I got them rolled out and Kevin helped me fry them up.

This was my first attempt at making Crispy Duck from scratch let alone the first time I've ever roasted a duck. Wow...these suckers are really greasy. I had to drain it about 5-6 times, but the final dish was absolutely amazing. Even though pancakes were a little chewy, they tasted pretty close to the real thing. Everyone was a little skeptical about the cucumber and spring onion slices and wondered what this Hoisan sauce was but after the first bites they were in love.

I also made an attempt to make sushi. Now when Min had her Chinese cooking night I hopped right in and did a great job at rolling these things up, but failed miserably several times today. I took so much time to get all the little pieces to go into this cut up and prepped.

Now I didn't make the raw fish sushi stuff. I made them with seaweed, rice, mayo, cucumber, crab sticks, avocado and spring onions. What makes this dish taste great is dipping it in soy sauce with a squeeze of wasabi.

Another favorite of Kevin's and mine is chicken satay. Min bought us some marinade and dipping sauce. After cutting up the chicken it has to marinade for several hours and since I was running out of refrigerator space so I set it outside on mom and dad's porch because it was pretty chilly that day. Also in true fashion we had to fire up the old BBQ to grill these chicken skewers. With subzero temperatures outside, Dad and Brad were real troopers to cook these up for me.

An absolute favorite of mine are spring rolls. I can totally appreciate paying what I do to have someone else make these things. Now spring rolls are a bit different than egg rolls...thy are much smaller. My mom didn't have a wok so I used her cast iron skillet which worked pretty good. I had to kind of improvise on some of the ingredients in these as well since I couldn't find everything.Kevin helped me to scoop up the good stuff onto the spring roll wrappers as I wrapped them up. The recipe makes a lot of spring rolls and I know Min said you could freeze them, but we made them all up.

One Americanized Chinese treat that we haven't found at all in the UK are crab rangoons. They are so American that the Wong's had never heard of them before. Kevin and I love them and so I took this opportunity to figure out how to make them so we can make them back in the UK.

Kevin braved the elements outside as well to fry up my spring rolls and crab rangoons. Crazy thing is that the spring rolls started to explode in the deep fat fryer. Not totally sure why, but we're guessing that they were so freaking cold from the outside air and when they hit the hot grease they just went crazy.

I also made up some sweet and sour chicken. After I got Min to clarify a few things on her original recipe to me, I have been able to make my best S&S chicken yet according to Kevin.

We had quite a spread and it took all day to get ready, but all of it tasted great. I hope that Min is proud of me. She has been a great teacher to me.

Most of the night we ate food, the guys played cards, and some of us played mom and dad's new Wii. My sister, her husband and my nephew came over but headed home before midnight. Kevin's great friend Brad, his wife Jaye and son Colin came all the way from Ankey to spend the evening with us since we weren't really able to go out (little Harry not on the bottle yet). Also my dad's brother, Kris, and my cousin, Kanaan also came over. We all had a blast!!!

I got Addison to bed early but Harrison decided to stay up late and see the new year in with us all. We watched Ryan Seacrest ring in the New Year...they have really done a decent job of transitioning him into Dick Clark's iconic position. We just turned the TV on in time to see the ball hit the bottom and the 2009 light up. Wow...2009...it was exactly one year ago that I had that icky feeling all over and found out the next day that I was pregnant with our little Harry and here he was today in my arms falling back to sleep. We are truly blessed!