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Ah, the year of the dragon! We celebrated in style. Most years we celebrate the Chinese New Year chez Cheeseparer, a long family tradition dating back to when Nixon went to China and was served chicken and walnuts. The Chicago Tribune printed a recipe. So delicious we make it to this day. Simple, too.
This year we went with Szechuan cuisine, with Gong Bao Chicken and Spicy Szechan-style eggplant. Yummers. To cool the palate I made a salad out of iceberg lettuce and clementines, both on sale as was the chicken. And we had rice, of course. For dessert, something I hadn't made in years: pineapple fritters. Whole Foods had pineapples for $2.50 each, a great deal. We had it in fruit salad yesterday and the fritters today and there's enough fritter batter and pineapple for some breakfast fritters.
Here is the recipe for the main course: Gong Bao chicken
The peanuts add lovely crunch, and the red pepper and the Sichuan peppercorns add heat, but it's not so hot you have to move the tissue box to the table. There's enough left for a light dinner tomorrow. My eggplant recipe was for 2 eggplants, so I cut it in half. Both recipes called for ginger and garlic (both healthy seasonings) and I cut the garlic cloves and ginger root on the mandolin to get really thin slices.
I always keep soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, sesame oil, garlic, ginger, and scallions on hand. Dried red chiles and Sichuan peppercorns, too. Rice, a given. This means that with the inexpensive staples, we can have stir fry at the drop of a hat. Shrimp, beef, and pork are good, too. Whatever is on sale, with whatever veggies are cheap at the market.
You know the drill.
Celebrate the year of the dragon with your own Asian feast. I use cast iron skillets instead of woks.
Saturday we're having goulash soup, one of our all time faves. A little beef or pork go a long way in soup, and it contains onions, celery, carrots and potato. Bell pepper, too. Sometimes tomatoes. It's easy to eat our veggies when we cook in other cuisines.
What cuisine have you cooked in lately?
The Cheeseparer
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| Chocolate Pecan Pie * |
We have a low-cal cheap quiche that it going into it's second night. I've also made some of my chicken soup with found everything and a big pot of homemade broth with chicken leftover from a Dr. Atkins low-carb menu. We'll finish the quiche for breakfast and the chicken soup for lunch.
Leverage your cooking. One of the ways to do that is to read the grocery ads and cook for the week by buying the specials. For example, this week our supermarket had steak, chicken breasts and kielbasa on sale. Roast beef in the deli. Baby carrots and slice mushrooms. Hey, those would be good with steak. Some spaghetti sauce over the chicken and you have the makings of chicken parm. The Kielbasa lends itself to grilling or cooking in a big heap of saurkraut and veggies. Cheap veggies, like carrots, potatoes and onion. Yukon Golds were on special. Good with steak and with kielbasa. Fruit salad with strawberries, bananas, apple and oranges. All on sale. Make a dinner salad with oranges, too. Maybe a rice pudding using on sale milk. Go for it!
Every week I save between $10 and $25 by using coupons and buying specials. And we eat well, thank you, with very few processed foods. You can, too. It takes a bit of menu planning, and this you can do during commercials or whenever. Doesn't take a lot of time. $25 a week is $1300 a year. That's a new computer, a nice little vacation or money socked away in the savings account. Or just eking along to get by. Healthy eating, too. You can do this. Give it a whirl.
* Pecans were a gift, chocolate left over from holiday baking, homemade crust. Every now and then we all deserve a treat. Remember that nuts, while not low-cal, are nutritious.
The Cheeseparer
