While it’s true that one end-of-the-year holiday is in the books for 2014, there are two more to cook for. When I first went to Hong Kong (pre-1997), I was astounded by the number of holidays they celebrated there – essentially all the traditional Chinese holidays as well as all the British ones – possibly 30+ days each year in total. Asian New Year (年节: Nián Jié, or Nián Festival) alone is over two weeks long. They love holidays in Hong Kong, and simple, clean, often ingenious Asian celebratory cuisine was always to be found.
To my delight, I also found that much of that festive Asian cuisine adapted perfectly well to the spirit of our own end-of-year holidays as well, and I thought I’d put out a few examples.
Shrimp Chips
These snacks start life as colorful, tough eyeglass-lens-like, thin, semi-transparent disks. They puff up like popcorn in hot oil, and they have a very pleasant, surprisingly concentrated shellfish taste. Shrimp chips are reminiscent of New Year’s Day celebrations, but certainly are very welcome at any party gathering.
Shrimp Chips
Blogger Jonathan H. Liu and his eight-year-old demonstrate their preparation.
Turkish Coffee
One of the oldest ways in the world to prepare coffee. Because this robust coffee is brought to a gentle boil three separate times, complex flavors emerge and are locked in. Select a rich, complex roast with a distinctive flavor, such as Kona (Hawai’i), Java (Indonesia), or mountain Việtnamese, and grind it as finely as you possibly can using a mortar and pestle. Weaponize it lol! Traditional Turkish coffee has four grades of sweetness, as follows:
Description |
Sugar |
sade |
no sugar |
az şekerli |
half a teaspoon sugar |
orta şekerli |
one level teaspoon sugar |
çok şekerli |
one and a half teaspoons sugar |
Turkic Coffee
For each demi-tasse, put 3 ounces (90ml) of cold water in your boiling pot, between one to two heaping teaspoons of your fine-ground coffee powder, and your choice of the amount of desired sugar from the table, above. Stir only until the sugar is fully dissolved and your coffee grounds sink to the bottom. Bring to a gentle boil over moderate heat, then take it off the heat to rest for a short time. Repeat a second time, then a third. The objective is to produce a thick foam head (called a
crema) on top of your poured brew.
Fully evolved, heady and complex with layer upon layer of wonderful flavors – no wonder it’s considered one of the best coffee preparations in the world.
Har Gao
Morsel delicacies called dim sum evolved from the need to add something to eat to the age-old practice of tea-tasting (yum cha) for travelers along the ancient Silk Road.
Har Gao are made of a delicate thin wheat starch skin in which is steamed a chopped shrimp filling. Not the easiest appetizer to make, but luscious and very refined. Who doesn't like har gao?
Har Gao
Serve as-is (more traditional), or with a dipping sauce of two parts shoyu (soy sauce) with one part fine rice wine vinegar with the tiniest pinch of sugar added.
Umeshu
Umeshu
Consider
umeshu a fine blended fortified wine apéritif port or sherry, but less harsh, lighter, delicate, and more natural and fruity. Japanese
umeshu (梅酒: plum liquor or plum wine) predates sushi culture by about a millennium, and it couldn't be more festive. Some offerings have an
ume plum or two in the bottom of the bottle.
Homemade Umeshu
While you can make your own - and Japanese people do - buy
a good bottle of Choya or Takara umeshu for as little as $9 at an Asian grocery. Serve it ice cold in a tiny apéritif glass along with your dessert. Delicious, and with just the perfect amount of natural sweetness - your guests will have no idea that it’s Asian.
Kheer
Kheer (खीर: khīr) is an Indian sweet pudding made by boiling rice, broken wheat, tapioca, or vermicelli with milk and sugar; it is flavored with cardamom, raisins, saffron, cashew nuts, pistachios or almonds. Ubiquitous in Bengal, and all down the eastern coast into the Southern Indian states, kheer is alive with the bite of aromatic, fresh-toasted cardamom, sweet raisins and crunchy nuts. A fancier version called pyasam substitutes coconut milk and banana for dairy milk, and rose water is sometimes considered an upscale ingredient for special occasions. A refined creamy dessert at any holiday meal.
Kheer
1/4 cup long grain basmati rice (washed and drained)
4-5 cups milk
6-10 cardamom seeds (crushed and toasted in ghee)
2 tbsp almonds (blanched silvered)
A pinch of saffron threads, soaked in a little hot milk
1 tbsp skinned pistachio nuts (chopped)
1 tbsp raisins
4-7 tbsp sugar or as desired
Put the rice and milk in the cardamom pan, bring to boil and simmer gently until the rice is soft and the grains are starting to break up. Add almonds, pistachio, saffron and raisins and simmer for 3-4 minutes. Add the sugar and stir until completely dissolved. Remove the rice kheer from heat and serve chilled.
Peking Duck
Hand raised ducks for the purpose have served the need for this Northern Chinese delicacy since the imperial age. The meat is prized for its thin, crisp skin, which is sliced in front of the diners by the cook. Ducks bred specially for the dish are slaughtered after exactly 65 days and seasoned before being roasted in a closed or hung oven. The meat is eaten with scallions, cucumber and sweet bean sauce with pancakes rolled around the fillings. Sometimes pickled radish is also included, and other sauces (like hoisin sauce) can be used.
Take a tip from me – don’t try to make your own Peking duck. I tried it just once and it came out like this.
My Peking Duck
Just kidding, but actually only half kidding. Seriously, don’t do it. There are three distinct cooking steps, and each step is intensive – the duck is first smothered with thick shoyu and fried in peanut oil, then poached in hot water to render some of the massive amount of duck fat, then processed with flavors and starches, deboned, then steam-roasted. Ugggh. Just buy it ready to go from an expert chef in Chinatown (about $12), but don’t forget to tell him you don't want the head :)
Peking duck has been the dish of international diplomacy for ages in China, and there’s little wonder why. The crunchy duck skin foiled perfectly with fresh and aromatic vegetables and wrapped together with a bright sauce in a soft pancake is truly inspired. Unforgettable. I used to get one every New Year’s Day when I lived on the Left coast, and it’s something I really miss here in Ohio.
Peking Duck