Chinese New Year! Have a party, cook up, dress up...




An inexpensive idea for a chandelier

 

Chinese New Year always comes at the perfect time. Holidays - gone, bad weather - constant, early sunsets - sadly, layers of clothes - suffocating, eek mood - yes, no paid holiday in sight - practically till summer! But don't fret, have a Chinese new year cook off instead!

A party where you can wear your sateen shirt you bought from China Town centuries ago and use those chopsticks that are just in the way between the forks!

 Or just go to China Town and be part of the festival! They have dragons, reds and golds, sounds and excitement!

 

Here is the idea - rice flour. Rice is the staple food in Asian cuisine but why not use it in a funky way?!

You can make a full menu with it and it would not look redundant for a second.

 

 

I made crab cakes, poached fish over sauteed vegetables and rice mousse with succulent shrimp, and rice pudding with lemon oil and candied ginger. Ha! Aren't you excited?!

 

Crab cakes are the usual chopped pickles, onion, bread crumbs, crab meat, one egg and then rolled in rice flour and salt. Fry and serve with any sauce that you feel like. Make it Fun!

 

You can poach fish without the whole drama of the 2 inches of oil in a glass pan and all that. Just add butter to a pan and some water..say 1/4 of a cup and then place the fish fillets in that. It will steam up and poach beautifully.

Saute veggies with a few drops of fish sauce.

The rice mousse - melt 1/2 a stick of butter and add 3 cups of water to it. Mix a cup of rice flour in a bit of water ( to avoid clumps) and add to the water and butter and cook till the mixture separates from the bottom. Don't forget to season it with salt and pepper.

 

 

The Crab Cakes

Fish poaching

 

 

 

 

 

The complete main dish

 



 And now some pictures of the dessert. Well, PonRizSan doesn't just make dessert, she fancies it up!

I scooped the inside of a few big lemons and used them as dishes for it. And to make the rice pudding boil a liter of milk with sugar and lemon oil. Add a few spoons of the milk to a cup of rice flour and mix it. Start scooping milk into the rice mixture and then the other way around until all the rice flour is in the milk. Mix 2 egg yolks and beat the whites to a foam. Again add some of the milk-rice mixture to the egg yolks and then the other way around and whisk. Lastly add the whites and stir well. Pour in and decorate with any fresh eatable green (mint and such) and some Trader Joe's candied ginger! Voila!

 

   

Warming up the yolks before they are sent in the mixture

Lemon rice fluffy pudding with candied ginger





PonRizSan asks how did it work out. It couldn't have been anything but a super success, right?

xoxo PonRizSan