An easy Chinese New Year feast
Chinese New Year is a celebratory occasion that gives you the best reason to enjoy a delicious Chinese meal. Why not prepare an easy yet festive one at home?
Soy chicken that’s moist and flavorful, colorful fried rice and a deeply flavored scallop noodle soup are kind to the wallet and can be prepped in advance. The only item you might want to buy is ready-made hakaw, those luscious shrimp-filled dumplings that are challenging to make even for an experienced home cook. But here’s the tip: buy them frozen from Santi’s or a Chinese grocery like Jash Mart in Quezon City. The price of a dozen is the same as the price of a few pieces that you order from a restaurant.
You will need to visit a Chinese grocery, at any rate, for certain ingredients that give Chinese food that authentic taste. But there are many Chinese groceries in the metro, and not just in Binondo (although that would make a fun trip for other reasons as well!) In San Juan, there’s Wei Wang on Wilson. At the Suki Market in Quezon City is the aforementioned Jash Mart. In Makati there’s Joy Market on Valero Street and AsinaMart at Circuit Makati. There’s also an AsinaMart at Ayala Mall Manila Bay in Parañaque.
For this menu you will need the following from a Chinese grocery: chicken marinade, chicken powder, Xiaosing cooking wine, dried scallop noodles and dried shiitake mushrooms. You can also buy your soy sauce and oyster sauce there as well, and frozen dumplings. You will be able to make use of these ingredients in other dishes, too.
As early as the day before Chinese New Year Eve, you can prepare the marinade for your soy chicken, and you can also cook your plain rice. Across Asia, fried rice and garlic rice are yummy ways to make use of day-old rice. Freshly cooked rice is too soft and can turn to mush when used for fried rice. I like to use Japanese rice for this fried rice recipe but you can use any rice you have on hand. You can also finely chop the veggies for the fried rice the day before. If you have a food processor, by all means use it to chop your onions, carrots and leeks.
Plan on preparing the soy chicken several hours before dinner though there’s hardly any active work involved; it’s more about letting the chicken sit in that marinade until the flavor permeates all of the meat. For the dried scallop noodles, you can also soak your dried shiitake mushrooms in hot water the day before to give them more time to soften and infuse the water with their flavor.
Soy Chicken
Ingredients:
Rinse and pat dry:
- 1 whole chicken, preferably fresh
- If you have a deep and narrow saucepan, use this so that you need less marinade to completely cover the chicken.
- For the marinade, heat in a frying pan:
- 2 tbsp. corn oil
Add:
- ½ head garlic, crushed
- 1 onion, cut into cubes and lightly crushed with a mortar and pestle
- 1-inch piece of ginger, cut into slices and slightly smashed with a mortar and pestle
- When fragrant, add:
- 1 bottle chicken marinade (Lee Kum Kee or Amoy)
- ½ cup Kikkoman soy sauce
- ¼ cup oyster sauce
- 1 tsp. sesame oil
- 2 tbsp. brown sugar
- ¼ tsp. pepper
Procedure:
Bring to a boil and then remove from the heat and let it cool down. When cool, place the chicken in a narrow saucepan or bowl and cover completely with the marinade. If the marinade doesn’t cover the chicken completely, turn it around every half hour or so. You can let the chicken marinate for one hour or up to four hours.
Bring the chicken and marinade to a boil over high heat, breast side down, then turn the heat down and simmer for 40 minutes. Remove the chicken from the marinade and let it dry for an hour. I like to park it in front of an electric fan. The leftover marinade can be stored in the refrigerator a few weeks for one more use.
Preheat the oven to 400F (200C).
Place the chicken on a baking pan and brush with:
1 tbsp. corn oil
Bake the chicken for 30-40 minutes, depending on the size. Let cool and present whole on a serving dish before cutting into pieces.
Fried Rice
Ingredients:
Heat in a wok or large frying pan:
- 2 Tbsp. corn oil
- Whisk and add to the pan:
- 2 eggs
Let the eggs set then remove from the pan. Wipe or wash off any egg that sticks to the pan.
Add to the pan:
2 tbsp. corn oil
Add:
- 4 cloves garlic, crushed
- 1 onion, finely chopped
- 1 carrot, finely chopped
- 2 stalks leeks, thinly sliced
Procedure:
Cook until the vegetables have softened, about five minutes, then add:
- 3 cups cold cooked rice
- 2 tbsp. Kikkoman soy sauce
- 1 tsp. chicken powder
Blend very well then add back the eggs. Serve topped with sliced leeks.
