Happy Lunar New Year ! With fried “snakes”.

Let’s start the new cycle with a Chinese brunch. Freshly made you tiao donuts and tonyu soy milk.

Yes, it’s a poor pun. LOL.

The you tiao had another name in each place I’ve seen them… or is it my Chinese sound hearing that is so random. This is fried bread. They surely make 2013 calories per snake, per stick. But, hao chi le, yum yum, that’s worth it

My recipe is super basic.

1 cup of bread flour (12% gluten or more, it’s important)
1 ts oil
1/4 ts of instant yeast
1/2 ts of baking powder
3 pinches of salt
water as needed (about 1 cup)

Mix. Let 5 minutes. Knead. Let one hour (till it doubles).
Spread a rectangle, cut strips, turn.

Bring oil to 160 degree, fry them to pale yellow. Keep them in the oven toaster to make next batches. Then fry them again at 190 degree just the time to get a golden color.

Serve hot with tonyu. It’s the best pairing.

Soy milk freshly pressed. Recipe here.

The texture is very elastic and it’s soft bread inside and the crust is crispy donut.

The contrast with creamy milk is great.

Chinatable in my kitchen

China is a whole world as wide as my knowledge of Chinese cuisine is narrow. The dishes are more or less authentic, but everything was good.

SOUP/SALAD :

Soup : Chinese beauty milk

Soup : Summer Chinese fragrant lake

Medusa salada (jellyfish)

Rice salad for a panda

RICE :

Happy rice (chahan fried rice)

Nira chahan

Eight treasure rice bowl

Peanut and carrot congee rice porridge

Genmai okayu, brown rice congee

NOODLES :

Today’s ramen, tan tan tan…

negi ramen (in soup with pork)

Banbanji, hiyamugi and fruit chu-hi. (Chinese chicken’n noodles)

Banbanji chicken noodles and young ginger

yakisoba

TOFU, SEAFOOD :

Shiso oyster omelet

Mabo fair : aubergine and tofu

Sesame sweet and sour tofu

Red and Sorghum with stinky tofu

Asari and douchi hot duet (black bean shellfish sauce)

Chinese crab dinner

recipe of mabo tofu

Mabo Tofu, azuki variation

Spicing up the Chuka standards, mabo tofu

dinner chuka

DIM SUM (dumplings…) :

Red daikon, red mochi.

you tiao donuts and tonyu soy milk.

panda-man (steamed meat bread)

nira mochi

satoimo mochi

gyoza

Gua Bao(steamed bread, quick) classic

Daikon mochi, the lucky white carrot cake

MEAT :

Cumin lamb chop and kujo negi, Chinese style

banbanji (chicken) and green soy

char-siu pork roast

Osmanthus pork (muxurou)

Lackered duck skin (Peking duck style)

Springtime bokchoi ring, oyster sauce stir-fry

“Sichuan huiguorou” styled chicken

SWEETS :

Sesame jewels. The Chinatown treat home-made.

Mango sherbet and litchees

mangomania pudding

A silky Chinese dessert, annin doufu

Chinese lampion apple

plum niangao (New Year sweets)

DRINKS :

yun-yeung cha (love duck tea)

Salty Gourmande, litchee cocktail

bubble tea (macha)

bubble milk (strawberry)

Yuzu puer cha

Watarigani for Chinese New Year. Little crabs, spicy marinade

That’s food to eat with your fingers so you can lick them after…

Watarigani. Japanese small soft-shell crabs. They are often just boiled in a hot pot, but prepared this way they become even more delicious.

The sauce, the seafood and veggies. The sauce is a personal arrangement of the Taiwanese sachajang (sacha sauce).
Today my marinade contained : mini shrimps in salty brine (ami ebi), garlic, onion, ginger, leek whites, negi leek greens, red chili, Okinawan sake, soy sauce and rice vinegar. I minced and mixed 30 minutes before using.

The crabs are coated with starch, then deep fried.

And covered with the marinade. Turned 2 or 2 times, about 10 minutes. They absorb a good amount of the sauce. Then transfer on the cabbage.

Daikon mochi, the lucky white carrot cake

That’s not a dessert of course, but the dim sum classic. Turnip cake, radish cake and I spare you the Chinese names, mostly because I’m unable of typing them. In Japan, it’s called daikon mochi. It’s actually made of daikon radish, even in China. But usually not of mochi (sticky rice), but plain rice flour.

So, shred 2 cups of daikon radish. Add 1/2 cup of water, cook a little till daikon gets a little tender.

Add rice flour. I use 上新粉 (joshinko), a processed Japanese flour. Add as much as you can to make a solid dough, still stick.

Flavoring : I fried onion, garlic and some red chili. Cut negi leek greens. Plus salt, pepper and a pinch of nutmeg.

Steam the mix till it changes of color to slightly yellow and slightly transparent. I put it about 40 min, in the rice-cooker with some water under the bowl.
Then if you’re a perfectionist, you let it chill, then place in the freezer 1/2 hour to harden and you can slice it perfectly when it’s half-frozen.

Yes, I made the casual version, I took the paste still soft with a spoon and stir-fried both sides. Serve with hot chili sauce and sesame oil as a dip. And Chinese tea.