“Good Canto” often meant “Hong Kong Canto” at NYU Stern, where my classes and social circles were dominated by fellow Asians, and I was informed by countless peers that my Cantonese sounded “funny”. Funny as my accent seemed (stemming from the parentals’ Wuzhou heritage), I never let it stop me from ordering dim sum in Chinatown or buying cheap fruits and veggies at the street stands. In fact, I always felt quite at home in Chinatown, where the fake goods hawkers still stand on street corners with their walkie talkies, yelling out brand name labels to entice passerbys to check out their warehouse goodies.

However, there was still one hurdle left to conquer. In all my years living in the city and countless hours in Chinatown, I had never done one thing: bought fish.

Now these are not your usual fish fillets, neatly scaled, deboned, and packaged at your local grocery store. These are freshly caught (or I’d like to think so) whole pieces of fish in all their glory, laying on beds of ice and waiting patiently for the chance to become someone’s next meal. I avoided buying fish in the past due to the dizzying variety and indecipherable Chinese characters, but I absolutely had to get fish for my first homecooked New Years feast.

I bombarded my dad with questions on which fish to buy before making the final decision – Long Lee please! Long Lee, known as Sole in English, was a flat, flaky fish my parents used to steam at home. When buying fish, always have the fishmonger scale and gut the fish. You have enough to worry about with all that bone left intact, and you don’t want the guts muddying up the flavor.

Steamy Kitchen had an excellent suggestion for serving the fish. Instead of traditionally serving the steamed fish with its cooking juices and cooked herbs, create a fresh herb sauce to drizzle on top. The modified recipe below is inspired by Jaden’s recipe.

You will need a dish to hold the fish and a large pot or wok for steaming. I bought one of those metal steamer legs on which to rest the dish, but you can also place an inverted bowl in the pot/wok to hold the plate of fish above the steaming water.

Ingredients:

1 pound sole (long lee)
1 1/2 tbsp Shaoxing cooking wine
Salt
Pepper

Combo #1:
4 stalks scallion, cut into 3 inch lengths
4 thin slices of ginger (vertically sliced)
Small bunch of cilantro

Combo #2:
2 tbsp cilantro, chopped
1 tsp sesame oil
2 tbsp Soy sauce
1/2 tsp sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper

Combo #3:
2 stalks scallion, cut into 3 inch lengths
2 thin slices of ginger (vertically sliced)
2 tbsp olive oil

Instructions:

1) Rinse the fish inside and out. Pat dry. Season inside and out with salt and pepper. Due to the flatness of my sole fish, I just seasoned the outside.

2) Take 2/3 of Combo #1 and lay it on the steaming plate. Place the seasoned fish on top and lay the rest of Combo #1 on top. If the fish is too big for the plate (as mine was), cut it in half.

3) Pour 1 1/2 tbsp Shaoxing cooking wine over the fish.

4) Boil about 2 inches of water in the large pot or wok (or until the water level covers 2/3 of the steamer leg/bowl). Lay down the steamer legs or inverted bowl and prop the plate of fish on top. Cover and steam on medium heat for 12 minutes for a 1 lb whole fish.

5) To check for doneness, poke a chopstick or fork near the top fin. The fish is done if it flakes easily.

Below is Jaden’s general time guideline for steaming the fish:

Whole fish 1 lb: check at 12 minutes, add 2 minutes for every 1/2 lb
Fillets 1 inch and thicker: check at 10 minutes, add 2 minutes for every 1/2 lb more thickness
Fillets less than 1 inch: check at 7 minutes
Super thin fillets: check at 5 minutes

6) Add ingredients in Combo #2 to a small bowl and microwave for 30 seconds. When fish is done steaming, carefully lift the plate out of the wok and pour Combo #2 over the fish. I chose to leave the fish atop the cooked cilantro/ginger/scallions and fish juice, but you can discard if desired before pouring Combo #2.

7) Heat up the olive oil and stir fry Combo #3 for about 15 seconds. Place this over the fish. Enjoy!

Look at those colors pop. The best part is that the long lee meat will fall pretty easily off the bone when you prod it with a spoon, so you’ll be less likely to choke on tiny prickly fish bones.

Thus marks the end of my Chinese New Years feast. Xin Nian Kuai Le! Gong Hay Fat Choy! (Or since it’s almost mid-April, Happy Spring and warm weather! … Hopefully soon? ….)

I came across the concept of Longevity Noodles through my Chinese New Years recipe search, and I thought to myself, why not add it to the menu? I could use a good dosage of long and happy life. Since the long noodles symbolize long life, you have to be careful not to break the noodles with your teeth or chopstick until they are completely inside your mouth. Stir fried mee suah (thin vermicelli noodles made from rice flour) with veggies usually graced the Chinese New Years table back home, but I decided to go with the chicken broth version.

This version of Longevity Noodles is incredibly easy to make. It is essentially noodles in egg drop soup topped with thinly sliced scallions and spam. I used the Taiwanese noodles bought in Hong Kong and the single serving packets of SPAM from the local supermarket (Single serving to prevent myself from pigging out on the rest of the processed meat later =X). You can of course use other noodles with this recipe, with mee suah being the most popular. And of course, you can substitute the spam with some healthier ham.

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cans low sodium chicken broth
2 eggs
1 serving of SPAM
2 scallion stalks
Chinese noodle of choice
Olive oil

Instructions:

1) Cook the noodles according to instructions on package. Drain and place into bowls.

2) Thinly slice the scallion (I just sued the green part).

3) Bring the chicken broth to a boil. Lightly beat 2 eggs and add to the broth, stirring constantly for 30 seconds. Turn heat off and set aside.

4) Heat oil in a frying pan and add the spam. Pan sear on medium heat until slightly brown, about 1 minute per side. Remove from heat and slice thinly.

5) Pour the hot broth over the noodles. Garnish with the sliced spam and scallion.

Serves 2.

The Chinese New Years feast is slowly coming together! Yumm look at all that food for two people :D I also made my classic delicious Soy Sauce Chicken recipe, found here.

Next post to round out the 6 course feast – Steamed whole fish, Chinese-style.

While on the topic of returning to basics, another vegetable dish often found in the Li household was stir fried bok choy. The technique of Stir Frying, which involves frying quickly in a small amount of oil over high heat, is very essential to Asian cooking. I still have faint memories of our newspaper covered kitchen back in Chicago, the newspapers used to catch oil spatters and prevent oil stains from clinging to the wall. My parents have toned it down in recent years, now preferring to stir fry by immediately adding water and covering with the lid.

Bok choy, along with some of my other favorite Asian veggies like Choy Sum and Dou Miao, are quick to cook and stir fry favorites. I decided to jazz up this dish with some sliced shiitake mushrooms. While oyster sauce is often the perfect complement to a simple veggie stir fry, there should be enough flavor from the stock and soy sauce for this dish to stand on its own. During weekend Dim sum gatherings though, I almost always order Choy Sum with Oyster Sauce. Makes me feel a little bit healthier amidst the endless bamboo cases of Siu Mai and Cheung Fun!

Always wash your Chinatown vegetables well to remove all the dirt! I’ve been lazy in the past and sometimes found tiny dead bugs floating in my watercress soup. =(

Ingredients:

8 heads baby bok choy
6 large shiitake mushrooms
2 cloves garlic, sliced
1 tbsp olive oil
1 cup chicken stock
1 tbsp soy sauce
Salt
Black pepper

Instructions:

1) Rinse the dried shiitake mushrooms and rehydrate in hot water. Cut off the stems.

2) Trim the baby bok choy stems and separate out the individual leaves. Rinse the leaves and set aside.

3) Slice up the garlic. Pour oil into pan and add the garlic. Turn the heat to medium-high and saute until fragrant and light brown.

4) Add the shiitake mushrooms and cook for 3 minutes. Toss the bok choy with the mushrooms and cook an additional 3 minutes.

5) Add chicken stock and soy sauce and simmer for 4 minutes. Season with additional salt and pepper to taste. Serve immediately.

Most of my favorite Chinese dishes are the simplest ones that don’t require 20 different ingredients and over-excessive garnishes. These are the dishes I have fond memories of my mom cooking in the kitchen, wearing her worn out red apron with her hair tied back, putting together a 3-4 course dinner every night after a long day of work. We always had dinner as a family every night (though that’s not to say we didn’t have the TV on in the background occasionally). Our meals usually centered around a nice healthy serving of white rice with two or three savory stir fried dishes. We almost always ended our meals with a bowl of piping hot soup, which in itself was a main dish since Asian soups are rarely without large chunks of vegetables and meat literally falling off the bone from hours of simmering.

I consider this shrimp and egg scramble one of the fundamental Cantonese homecooked dishes and definitely a dish for New Year’s. It’s easy to whip up, and honestly you don’t even need the cornstarch or sesame oil if you don’t have any in the pantry. However, I do like the nutty aroma from a few drops of sesame oil on my food (and this is coming from a girl who doesn’t exactly go nuts for nuts).

Ingredients:

1/2 pound raw shrimp
4 eggs
1/2 tsp cornstarch
1/2 tsp sesame oil
Salt
Black pepper
Olive oil

Instructions:

1) Wash, de-shell, and devein the shrimp. Pat dry.

2) Combine the shrimp, salt, pepper, cornstarch, and sesame oil. Mix well and marinate at room temperature for 10 minutes. Beat the eggs in a separate bowl.

3) Heat up the oil in a large pan and add the shrimp. Spread the shrimp out in the pan and let fry untouched for 1 minute.

4) Flip shrimp over and fry on the other side for another minute, or until cooked through.

5) Pour the eggs over the cooked shrimp. Push the egg towards the shrimp so some of the egg sticks to the shrimp. Season with some more salt. I like my eggs a little runny in the middle so I cooked for about 1 minute. Serve immediately.

If you like spicy, try this with some sriracha. :)

The year of the rabbit. I had finally reached two cycles on the Chinese New Year calendar, and it was time to celebrate with my first New Year’s dinner attempt. My coworker suggested that I cook rabbit for my celebration, but somehow it felt unlucky to cook my own kind. I did want to create a feast though, something akin to the countless dishes my parents would make back home. I scoured the web for recipes and bombarded my home phone line with questions, and here I present to you the beginning of LJ Bistro #10, Chinese New Year style.

Throughout my years of actual cooking, I’ve kept no secret my intense love affair with eggs and the many ways of cooking this fine protein. Despite my lamentations on the high cholesterol content, I can never resist throwing an egg or two into my soup noodles and other simple dishes. There was no way I could put together a Chinese New Year dinner without some Chinese Marbled Tea Leaf Egg (Cha Ye Dan).

Tea Leaf Eggs are a popular street snack in Asia, and they are very easy to make at home. The mixture of soy sauce, tea, and star anise will fill your kitchen with an irresistible aroma, and your guests will marvel at the intricate marbling on the egg’s smooth surface. I have seen recipes calling for dried tangerine peels and peppercorn, but the simple list of ingredients I used still produced a terrific appetizer.

Ingredients:

6 eggs
3/4 cup soy sauce
2 tea bags (I used Lipton’s black tea bags)
2 star anise
1 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar

Instructions:

1) Make the hard boiled eggs. Fill a pot with the 6 eggs and add enough water to cover the eggs by 1 inch. Bring to a boil and lower the heat, simmering for 3-5 minutes.

2) Leave the water in the pot and run the eggs under cold water. Once cool, use a spoon to lightly crack the entire shell. The more cracks the better, but be careful not to remove the shell. The cracks allow the tea mixture to seep through and infuse the egg with flavor. It also creates that gorgeous marbling effect.

3) Put the eggs back into the pot of water. Add the soy sauce, tea bags, star anise, salt, and sugar, and make sure the liquid comfortably covers the eggs. Bring to a boil.

4) Allow the eggs to simmer for 40 minutes. Turn the fire off and steep for another 2 hours. The longer you steep, the more flavorful and marbled the egg. You can also leave the eggs in the mixture overnight.

5) Once ready, peel the shell and enjoy! You can eat them quartered, or if you’re like me, just dig right in.

More recipes for the other Chinese New Year dishes to come!

For some reason, I rarely cook Chinese dishes. At least for me, Chinese cooking is something that comes intuitively, with dishes made on the fly and seasoned to taste as I stir the different ingredients in the pan. The dishes cooked are often reminiscent of what my parents make back home and rarely require complicated ingredients or techniques. That’s why I chose to make Chinese food for LJ Bistro #3, but I wanted to venture out beyond my comfort zone and really try incorporating some new seasonings beyond the typical salt and soy sauce.

This was my first time cooking with ginger. I was never a fan of the root growing up, but I’ve become more open to giving it a second chance, especially since ginger really does add a distinctively Asian flavor to any dish.

Ingredients:

1/4 cup hoisin sauce
1/4 cup honey
2 tbsp soy sauce
3 garlic cloves
1 tbsp fresh ginger
8 chicken drumsticks
Olive oil

Instructions:

1) Finely dice the cloves of garlic and fresh ginger.

2) Mix the hoisin sauce, honey, soy sauce, garlic, and ginger in a large bowl. Use a sharp knife to score the chicken meat under the skin. Add the chicken to the marinade and toss to coat. Cover and refrigerate for at least 1 hour but preferably overnight.

3) Add some olive oil to a pan and sear the drumsticks, about 1 minute per side.

3) Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil and transfer the chicken to the baking sheet. Drizzle the marinade on top.

4) Bake for 25 minutes or until the chicken is cooked through. Plate the chicken and coat with any marinade left on the sheet. Serve over rice.

Andrew’s verdict? This was the best dish of the meal! The marinade was delicious, though marinating the drumsticks for the full 24 hours would have really allowed the meat to soak up all the flavor. Baking chicken is also awesome – budget friendly meat that always comes out so tender!

Cooking for LJ Bistro requires coordination and a good sense of timing. Since this has become a weekly tradition, I like to serve multiple complementary dishes based upon that particular night’s theme. Regardless, when you’re cooking Chinese food, it’s pretty standard to present a wide array of meat and vegetable dishes to be enjoyed with rice.

I bought a package of the dried seaweed that comes in thick, round flat sheets a while back. I had tired of boiling it as a soup with egg, and I decided to go on Google one night to see how other people enjoyed their seaweed. You can use either ground pork or chicken for this recipe. I chose to use chicken that night since it was on sale at the supermarket.

Ingredients:

1 1/2 pieces of seaweed
1/4 lb ground pork or chicken
2 cloves garlic
1 1/2 cup water
Olive oil
Scallions
Salt
1 1/2 tbsp oyster sauce
White pepper powder

Instructions:

1) Soak seaweed in a bowl of water to soften it. Rinse seaweed of impurities. Drain and set aside.

2) Finely mince the garlic and mix it into the ground chicken. Heat olive oil in pan and stir fry the chicken until cooked, using the spatula to finely mince up the meat.

3) Add water to the meat, followed by the seaweed. Bring to boil and add the oyster sauce. Salt and pepper to taste.

4) Sprinkle some chopped scallions on top before serving.

Eggplant with minced pork (in my case, minced chicken) is one of the more popular dishes at Chinese restaurants. It was a dish I grew up eating at my parents’ house and is delicious when served over white rice. This recipe is best made with the thin Asian eggplants since they provide more skin surface area. However, a standard eggplant from the supermarket works just as well, though try to choose the slimmest one possible.

I gotta admit, cooking two different types of minced chicken that night got a little confusing since I wanted to incorporate my pound of ground chicken in both the eggplant and the seaweed dishes. Taste-wise, a very successful Chinese food dinner, though in need of a bit more color. (Black seaweed and dark purple eggplant plated with brown chicken drumsticks..)

Ingredients:

1 eggplant
1 scallion
5 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp rice vinegar
1 clove garlic
1 tbsp brown sugar
1 tsp cornstarch
Olive oil
1/5 lb ground pork or chicken

Marinade for chicken:
1 tsp sesame oil
1 tsp hoisin sauce
White pepper powder

Instructions:

1) Wash eggplant and cut off the top. Cut the eggplant into quarters lengthwise. Diagonally slice up the eggplant into uneven chunks, making sure to leave some skin on for each piece.

2) Finely mince the clove of garlic. Create the marinade for the ground chicken by combining the sesame oil, hoisin sauce, garlic, and dash of white pepper powder. Mix with the ground chicken and let rest for 10 minutes.

3) Stir fry the chicken until cooked, using the spatula to finely mince up the meat. Set aside.

4) Heat olive oil in pan on medium heat. Add the eggplant and cook for about two minutes before adding water. Cover the pan with a lid and allow eggplant to steam at medium-low heat for about 5 minutes.

5) Mix the soy sauce, rice vinegar, brown sugar, and cornstarch together in a bowl.

5) Add the cooked minced chicken and soy sauce mixture to the eggplant and cook for another 5 minutes until tender.

6) Sprinkle some chopped scallions on top before serving.

You know a Chinese restaurant is good when you see a lot of Chinese folk eating there. Like many other Chinese restaurants in NYC, they try to overwhelm you with the extensive menu plopped down on your table as soon as you take a seat. There must have been at least 100 dishes to choose from, but my eyes immediately zoomed in on the congee and dim sum section. I never had a craving for congee while living at home with the parents, but once I had been weaned from the Chinese food I had been brought up on to journey forth into my first summer living alone in the city, I began to miss the traditional home comforts. Congee is usually served during the cold winter days, but there’s nothing wrong with some good congee in the summertime either.

The dim sum we ordered was quickly whisked out from the kitchen, and we snacked on xiao long bao and scallion pancakes as we waited for our congee.

Pork & preserved egg is a very traditional congee dish and definitely recommended, as is the crab. (Though for some reason we felt like they mixed the order up and put other seafood into the congee besides crab). Only qualm about our meal was that our waiter forgot to pick up the sad lonely glass of lychee martini that I had ordered. Oh yeah, try to eat here on the weekdays, because weekends generally mean a longer wait to endure before being seated.

Address:

100 Allen St
New York, NY 10002