Lunar New Year - Hakka Dinner

As half-promised, here are the dishes from the New Year celebration with the Hakka Association. We gathered at the New Fortune Restaurant and sat in tables of 10. Each table was served the following dishes on the round table and we each got a serving of each. In the order of appearance/occurence:

Cold Appetizer (From Outside-In) - Sliced Cuttlefish, Pickled Cucumber, Beef, Pork, Jelly Fish, Pickled Cabbage and Carrots, Garnished with Chinese Parsley
Fried Shrimp Ball
Seafood Soup
Stir Fried Lobster
Roasted Crispy Chicken (not pictured because I wasn't there when it was served)

Roasted Pork over Chinese Broccoli
Sauteed Pork with Squid and Celery (aka Hakka Stir Fry)
Steamed Snow Fish (aka Cod)
Food art (aka I was bored in between dishes)
Sauteed Pork over Fried Egg Noodles
Sliced Oranges and Fried Nian Gao with Green Bean filling

Most dishes were authentic enough, some of the flavors could have been a bit better. This year most foods weren't too salty but rice still would've been a nice add-on. We have the same dishes each year just modified slightly. The dishes I wouldn't mind having again (and recommend) are the Cold Appetizer, Fried Shrimp Ball, Sauteed Lobster (without the shells!!), Roasted Pork over Chinese Broccoli and the Fried Nian Gao with Green Beans. At $25 a person, it's a pretty good deal to have such a wide variety of dishes!

Note: All pictures were taken on my Droid because I forgot to bring my camera!

Lunar New Year - Family Dinner

As a family, we always celebrate Lunar New Year. In the past, because of school, we always chose the weekend with the least amount of school activities/projects. Therefore, even though New Year isn't until the 3rd of February, we had our dinner last night. The Chorus Dinner is on the 5th so we chose an earlier week so we wouldn't be eating so much food in one weekend.

There is a tradition that for New Year's dinner you always cook alot more dishes than normal. You're supposed to eat a little bit of everything but never finish any dish. Leftovers are must because it means you will have leftovers the remainder of the year. There's always a fish, a meat, a soup and many fried foods and desserts. And of course, you can't forget red envelopes!!! We didn't cook as many dishes as we normally do in previous years. This year, everyone except me is sick on some level so we didn't prepare as many dishes. We typically have 2-3 more dishes, a shrimp dish, and exotic dish and another random dish. LOL.

From Left to Right: Radish Sticky Rice, Yucca Sticky Rice, Fried Yam, Red Bean Sticky Rice (Banana flavored) - I fried and arranged everything. ;)
Drunken Chicken Soup - this is a very different soup than our normal soup. Usually it's a mustard green soup but Mom wanted to change it up a bit this year.
Top Left: Mixed Vegetables with Fried Dough

Bottom Left: Chinese Broccoli in Oyster Sauce - this is a popular Cantonese dish

Middle: Steamed Flounder with Black Beans

Right: Sauteed Bamboo Shoots with Roasted Pork
Hakka Stir Fry - this was the last dish so it is taken by itself instead of with the dishes above.
And red envelopes! Ooh, there are extras!!! This year, every one received a "normal" New Year red envelope but also a "bonus" red envelope because I recently got a promotion and want to share it with my family. =)

If I take enough pictures next week, there maybe be another post for next week's dishes! =)

January 2011 dishes

I realize that January is not quite over but these are the dishes for the month of January, all but the first were made by me (though I know how to cook the first dish too).

Szechuan Fried Butterfly Shrimp - 2011.01.01
Salmon Fried Rice - 2011.01.03
Black Bean Pepper Salmon - 2011.01.05
Dried Shrimp with Vermicelli Soup - 2011.01.11
Spam Spaghetti - 2011.01.19
Black Bean Pepper Chicken - 2011.01.31

Random meals I cooked in January...

Sauteed Gourd - 2010.01.11

Tomato, Scrambled Eggs and Frozen Tofu soup - 2010.01.18

Tuna Fish Burger Over Steamed Broccoli - 2010.01.25

Egg Drop Soup with Jalapeno Leaves - 2010.01.25
Note: This is how Egg Drop Soup is supposed to look (without the leaves), not the funky yellow stuff you see in carry outs. The Jalapeno leaves are from the jalapeno tree that I have, I picked the leaves that didn't look to old and threw them in the soup for coloring. Jalapeno leaves are used for medicinal purposes and do not have a strong taste.
Sauteed Napa with Chinese Sausage - 2010.01.26

Note: I have too much eggs int he fridge, hence so many dishes with eggs...this is not helping my cholesterol, I know, but I'm not about to let them go to waste!

If you want to know how to cook something, please ask me, I'm too lazy to type it all out, they're all really simple, I promise!!

Homecooked Roasted Pig Feet (2009.05.11)

The Taiwanese have a tradition of eating roasted pig feet with noodles on their birthday. We didn't have it with noodles, but with white rice. I don't like pig feet very much because it can be rather sticky and it's all fat so it's not really that good for you. When you mix the sauce with noodles, it because really tasty though.

This picture is missing some green or red. LOL.

Lunch Box from JiaLeFu (2009.05.10)

After the movie there were lunch boxes from JaiLeFu in Annandale, VA. The owners are Hakka and cooked some Hakka dishes for us. Going clockwise. Roasted pork with pickled veggie (梅菜扣肉). The pork must be the part with a layer of fat, it tastes better than the pork itself. Unfortunately they did not roast this long enough for the flavor to go into the meat and was lacking some garlic to give it a kick. Sauteed bamboo shoots (did I mention this is bamboo season?) Pandas like raw bamboo, humans don't. Need I say more? Seasoned chicken that was a bit tasty, just a bit. I think it was supposed to be drunk chicken, but it wasn't drunk, just had a bit of salt...

Dinner Box from Bob's 66 (2009.05.09)

I think I complain too much about food that isn't homecooked. Well, here's another series. The dinner box was given to us so we didn't have to go out and figure out what to do for dinner before the concert. Everyone got the same thing, a mix of too many strange things, all bland but the bitter squash, which was bitter, so natural.

Going clockwise. Some kind of fish that was sauteed with bamboo and snow peas. Very bland and too fishy. Yellow pickle. Not my favorite food. Ground pork with lots of five spice over rice. Too much five spicy. Pickled green mustard. Tasted ok. Bitter squash with anchovies. It wasn't cooked long enough so it was a bit on the raw side, but the bitter squash was very bitter, excellent. Roasted Egg. Bland...I actually looked forward to eating the roasted egg we still have at home!! Finally bamboo tips with pork. Bland, once again. The bamboo itself was very soft and tasty. It is bamboo season!

I don't eat salty foods, so if I think it's bland, then it really has no flavor!!!

Homecooked 肉羹 - Thick Soup with Pork (2009.04.28)

This is a Taiwanese dish that my mom cooks fairly often. It's a soup that is thicken using tapioca instead of the standard corn starch in most soups. The pork is breaded with ground shrimp. The veggies include napa cabbage, tree mushroom, carrots, bamboo and an assortment of other things my mom didn't have. The soup's base is flavored with black vinegar. It's not as strong as white vinegar in taste, but has a different fragrant flavor white vinegar doesn't have. The soup goes very well with any type of noodles or rice.

The mandarin pronunciation sounds strange, but in Taiwanese it it pronounced "Bah Gee."

Homecooked Dinner (2009.04.14)

Ham sauteed with green peppers and onion (spicy). This isn't the most exciting dish, rather plain and ordinary but it has a nice assortment of colors.


This is napa soup cooked in ham broth (as evident by the big ham bone). There are also carrots and straw mushrooms in the soup. It's rather light and yummy.

Vidalia - DC Restaurant Week

So, another Restaurant week excursion, this time with E for lunch. Vidalia's is an American cuisine concentrate on Southern foods, in the up-scale version. It's located at 1990 M St, NW, Washington DC, just past the McD's is you're walking from the Dupont Circle stop. The service was excellent, no complaints there. The gentleman we had was very polite and was great! The food...well a bit od a different story...

I took pictures of E's 3-course as well, so I'll explain a bit of both...

We started with a "pre-appetizer" - Corn Bread and Onion Bread. It was strange to eat the onion bread after the corn bread, but it probably would've tasted better in a sandwich or something anyway. E ate her onion bread before I took a picture, that's why you see 2 corn breads and an onion bread...


On to my appetizer: Sunny Side Up Path Valley Hen Egg which composed of chicken liver fondue, yellow corn grits and julienne black truffle. Now that I think about is there even such a thing as a Rooster Egg? Well that explains the picture below... I think I should've chosen something else... I didn't like the sauce or grits...it had a strange flavor I couldn't swallow. And I really didn't eat much of it either, just some of the egg whites. The truffles didn't taste like anything, just texture...


E ordered Crispy Pig Tails which had pickled turnips, quail egg, pink lady apple sauce and rye jus. I guess that explains the white and red thing on the side, quail egg and pickled turnips. I don't see how this is "pig tails" plural... I didn't taste it, so no comment from me, but E ate the whole thing so I guess it was acceptable to some respect.


For my entree I got the thing I wrote about in my status all week: Southern Fried Frog Legs which had blue cornmeal polenta, cinnamon cap mushrooms and garlic emulsion. Well, it was rather interesting. I never had frog legs before, and they really do taste like chicken, just without the big bones in them. It only had a tiny toothpick like thing and the joints. The sauce, again was strange to me. I don't know why the mushroomc were called "cinnamon cap" since it didn't have anything cinnamon to it. It was like the oriental white mushroom I had before, only bigger.


E got the Shrimp and Grits which had yellow grits, andouille sausage, pearl onions and spicy shellfish cream. It's rather bubbly. Ther table next to us got this and it wasn't bubbly at all, how strange. I had a shrimp and it tasted like shrimp. I didn't try the rest of it, the bubbliness was a tad strange to me.


On to dessert! I got Vidalia's Lemon Chess Square which was a buttery crust layered with rich lemon custard, garnished with berry compote and sweet cream. I really though the 'sweet cream' was just a thick whip cream. Ha. And it has a tree, which I'm attempting to write a story about later... It was pretty good and I was looking forward to it since the pre-course was just ok... It's as it describes and was pretty tasty.


E got the Banana Napoleon which had caramelized bananas with salted caramel mousse, bitter sweet chocolate layers and salted caramel sauce. I had a piece of it, the choclate wasn't exactly 'bittersweet' but it tasted pretty good. I didn't try the caramel sauce, now that I know it was 'salted' that was probably a good idea not to try it! Though the salted caramel mousse didn't taste bad so the sauce probably wasn't too bad either.


It's a good thing the dessert was good otherwise I would've been rather disappointed. I still think I ordered the wrong appetizer which just kind of set me off a bit..

Total price: r-wk price $20.09 + tax + tip = $26/person

So here's my tree! Isn't it pretty?


And it got de-rooted...


And in an attempt to plant it back into the "Earth" (caramel sauce)...


The End. *applause*

Cuisine of China

So, I cook at a restaurant occasionally. Today being one of the days. I took some pictures of the foods I cooked, none of your boring fried rice and lo mein, but other stuff you may not normally see or eat.

I just like how well my camera takes pictures. This is just the onions and frozen peas and carrots before it became the Curry Chicken it was below.


Spicy Curry Chicken. A bit of garlic, salt, curry powder, sugar, hot peppers, and soy sauce. Some corn starch mixture to make the sauce thick, and voila!


Beef and Broccoli with napa in a brown sauce.


Yu-Shaing Pork with water chestnuts in a sweet, sour and spicy garlicky sauce. Not exactly my favorite dish to eat, but I like making it.



Orange Chicken. I think this was the 3rd or 4th one I made today...I decided I should take a picture since I was making so many. Ha.

富記 (Full Kee)

At 富記 (Full Kee) in DC (H St, I think) we grabbed our dinner. We both ordered a type of noodle soup. The first picture shows 燒鴨混沌河粉湯 (Roasted duck, wontons and he fun soup). The duck was good. The wontons were a mix of shrimp and pork and were additions to the soup. That was good too. He fun is a thick rice noodle. Also very good.


E ordered a 叉燒混沌蛋麵湯 (BBQ pork, wontons and egg noodle soup). The BBQ pork was pretty good, very standard BBQ pork. The egg noodles, all right. I may have to try it again, but I like he fun alot, so maybe not...hehe


Total price: $16.50 ($7.50 for each bowl + tax + tip)

大家樂 (Szechuan House)

At 大家樂 (Szechuan House) at 748 6th Street NW in DC, E and I had brunch before heading to the Auto Show a few blocks away. E ordered the Congee for both of us as well as the 油條.

This first picture shows the congee, the pork is the pinkish stuff and the preserved egg is the black stuff. Congee is basically rice cooked in alot of water. The soup is thick due to the rice being almost gone (not in it's original rice shape). Here you can't see the shape of the rice at all. The spring onions give the light breakfast a kick and come color to the dish.


This picture is part of a 油條. (I wasn't quick enough to take a picture before someone devoured half of it =P) I'm not a big fan of this since I know some of the ingredients in it. It tastes crispy and is only good when it's crispy. It's poofy (alot of air) and is made of dough and was fried (to it's golden brown color). In Taiwan this is eaten with soy bean milk (as the table next to us had this) but E (and HK people) eat this with their congee, as seen in the last picture.


The 油條 is placed into the congee to compliment the lightness of the congee with the fried 油條. This is kind of like putting crispy noodles (or saltine crackers) into soup. It adds a bit of substance to it as well. This is E's bowl of congee with 油條 mixed in it. I ate mine separately. ^_^


Total Price: $12.75 ($5 per congee, $2 for you tiao, plus ridiculous DC tax)