ringing in a belated chinese new year

jessica and i (or, to better describe it, jessica) decided to throw a chinese new year bash this year. we decided to celebrate the following weekend due to impending homework. on our ambitious, but not too ambitious menu: scallion pancakes, a lotus root salad, vegetable dumplings (with green har-gao-like skins), sticky rice packets (which have a name in chinese – maybe ‘joong’?), rice noodle rolls with chinese broccoli in them, tea eggs, a new year cake, red bean sesame balls, pineapple buns, clementines, and oh, there was one more thing, something sweet…but i’ve forgotten. i would love to describe each one of the things we made, but this will be a brief blow-by-blow because i don’t seem to be in a writing mood.

i’m always thrilled when something i make looks like it’s genuinely the thing i was trying to make. somehow it makes me feel more successrul, which i suppose is natural since i’m trying to emulate the photo anyway – but the feeling of success is disproportionate to the situation. anyway, the pineapple buns were an example of this – we even baked them on this huge pan that looks like the ones they use in the real bakeries. the filling could have been better, but they looked so pretty! as did the tea eggs and the red bean sesame balls; i was most excited about the red bean sesame balls, which puff up slightly when you fry them, and turn golden brown where there aren’t sesame seeds. they’re actually pretty easy to make – you just mix rice flour with sugar water and take balls of it to make little pods – but i’m mystified as to how the bakeries make them in an efficient way.

quick hits:

• the indian take-out in the back of shalimar (next to libby’s liquors in central square) is pretty good, and cheap – a mango lassi, samosa, and two entrees + rice for $6-7.
• the food sections of the new york times and globe have been lackluster in the past few weeks. there was a semi-interesting piece on some pastry classes in the globe recently, but that was the only high point. brownie points to the new york times, though, on its issue that involved food and fashion.
• actually, i tried the grapefruit-lemon marmalade from that issue. my resulting marmalade is a shade bitter, as marmalade is wont to be, but it smells wonderful and has a great color. now i just have to find people to foist it off on…as is usual, i was really just experimenting with making jam, rather than wanting actual marmalade. the most fascinating thing about the whole process was the fact that you extract the pectin from the fruit membranes (you put em in a cheesecloth bag and simmer it with the actual fruit). that part of the process is akin to when jessica and i made flaxseed goop as an egg replacer in a cake for our IAP class. the jam, consequently, gelled like a charm, which is the first time i’ve ever made jam successfully. who would have known that there was so much pectin in the membranes of the fruit? (besides harold mcgee.)
• a note about that cheesecloth bag: it is one of my most useful acquisitions, oddly enough. jessica and i used it to make paneer, then the flaxseed goop, and now extract pectin. i’m sure we’ve used it for other things, too… at any rate, all $3 investments that provide such a return are definitely worth it.
• when making red bean sesame balls, you make the sugar water with “brown sugar.” available only at chinese supermarkets, it was called “poon tang” on epicurious.com’s recipe for the sesame balls. but “brown sugar” is so typically chinese-in-the-united-states.