Date I made these recipes:
February 19, 2017 – Belated Chinese New Year—the year of the Rooster!
Full Color Chinese
Cooking – 30 Recipes by Constance D. Chang
Published by Shufunomoto Co., Ltd. Tokyo , Japan
© 1969; fourth printing August 1970
Purchased at Goodwill
Recipe: Chicken Noodle Soup – p. 25
Fowl Cooking –
Chicken, That Is by Virgo Paynter Miyamoto
Published by Mutual Publishing Company
© 1989
Purchased at Kona Bay Books, Kona ,
Hawaii
Recipe:
Cock-a-Doodle-do-da Casserole – p. 144 (Chicken with a veggie mix of
artichokes, olives, pimento, green pepper and onion, topped with soup, sour
cream and cheese – yum!)
Thank goodness the Chinese New Year – the Year of the
Rooster – lasts the entire year because if not for that, I might not be able to
do what I am doing which is to finally get around to telling you in the month
of March what I made (late) in February.
As always, life gets in the way of me making other plans!
So the Year of the Rooster – woo hoo! Unlike the zodiac calendar we're all familiar
with - Aquarius, Pisces, Libra, etc., a Chinese zodiac calendar is broken into years and each year is assigned an
animal. The animal signs are: rat; ox;
rabbit; tiger; dragon; snake; horse; goat; monkey; rooster; dog, and pig, and
these animal signs repeat every 12 years.
So, for example, if you were born in 1912, 1924, 1936, 1948,
1960, 1972 and so on, you are a rat – ha!
If you were born in 1933, 1945, 1957, 1969, 1981, 1993, 2005, 2017, and
(coming up), 2029, you are a rooster! And just like the zodiac signs we are
familiar with, rats and roosters and the other animals have lucky numbers,
unlucky numbers, lucky colors, personality traits, other "animals" to
avoid and so on.
Here's an example: People born in a year of the Rooster are "very
observant, hardworking, resourceful, courageous, and talented. Roosters are very confident in themselves." Rooster lucky numbers are 5, 7, and 8 and red
is an unlucky color.
I have to say, much of this amuses and so every now and
then, I do a deeper study into these signs although I often disagree with what
I read. One thing I read while
"researching" these "year of" signs almost made me spit my
coffee onto my keyboard and it was a chart titled "Famous Dogs."
Ha! Hahahahahahaha. Let me assure you that this list did not
include Lassie or Rin Tin Tin (but did include Winston Churchill so that's
cool).
It should go without saying that celebrating the Chinese New
Year means making Chinese food and I did that by cooking from one of my Chinese
cookbooks, but I also had to – just had to - make something from this hilarious
cookbook I purchased in Hawaii last year:
Fowl Cooking...Chicken, That Is. There's a reason why this book was so fitting
and so let's get to it.
You may not know this, but the island of Kauai
So we should not have been surprised, and yet were, when at
5:00 a.m. on the first morning of our most recent stay, we were rudely awakened
by a rousing "Cock-a-doodle-doo" by a you know who! I wish I was able
to capture that Kodak moment i.e. the look on our faces when we heard it. I remember commenting that I felt like we
were in an episode of the TV show, Green
Acres! Later that day, while
relaxing by the pool, I heard a "cheep, cheep, cheep" and looked down
in time to see a mama chicken and her little chicklets strolling by my beach
chair on their way to the...pool?
Fast forward then to last year when we were on the Big
Island and once again, on our first morning there were awakened by a rousing
"Gobble, gobble, gobble" of a wild turkey, not to be confused with
the alcoholic beverage, Wild Turkey which
we drank after this happened. After
folks. Once again, the look we gave each
other was priceless more so because good lord, are fowls on the move? Have they grown tired of the overcrowded Kauai and are now looking for more space in which to grow
and raise their families on the Big I? (Think House Hunters Chicken [version]: "Well, Kauai 's
chicken coops are 'a little small' so we're looking for more space. We'd like to stay in the same neighborhood
but would move to the bigger island if need be...") At any rate, we shall just have to go back
soon to monitor the situation.
Okay, so, with all that in mind, it was time to pull some
recipes and I had no trouble finding recipes containing chicken. These recipes don't go together at all but
they contain our "secret" ingredient and that's all that
matters. By the way, unless you own a
chicken farm (my paternal grandparents did), you will not find rooster (as in
the Year of the "Rooster") in a grocery store, likely because it's a
pretty tough bird and I don't mean "street" tough, I mean tough to
eat. So roosters are out and really, we
should redub this year "The Year of the 'Hen.'" I may need to send a letter to the Chinese
government.
And so folks, let's review my two dinner selections – Cock-A-Doodle-Do-Dah Casserole from Fowl Cooking...Chicken, That Is, and Chicken Noodle Soup from the Full Color Chinese Cooking cookbook. Think of these as a Tale of Two Chickens and
by all means, feel free to make and serve these separately lest your palate and
your family members get confused.
Now I could have made something Chinese-related from the Fowl Cooking cookbook, but given our
experiences in Hawaii ,
I just could not pass up the opportunity to make the hilariously and
appropriately named Cock-A-Doodle-Do-Dah
Casserole. This dish is what my
mother would call a "company" casserole, not that my mother ever
served any guest in our home a casserole as she favored company classics like a
beef roast or Swiss steak or baked chicken. This was a yummy casserole though
because in addition to the requisite chicken, it contained ingredients we
casserole lovers cherish: cream of
chicken soup, sour cream and parmesan cheese.
It also includes artichoke hearts, noodles, and a few other
ingredients. We quite liked it.
As to the [Chinese] Chicken
Noodle Soup, it was easy to make, the vermicelli noodles were a fun
addition, but it fell flat on flavor. (Well, did I find my "f" key on
the keyboard, or what?). The recipe
called for three "spices" – salt, pepper and MSG. Now most of us know that MSG has been dubbed
the evil empire of seasoning since it can trigger migraine headaches and I sure
didn't want that, but I think of an appropriate substitute and I wish I had
because it needed a little extra "something" to liven it up a
bit. I suppose one could use soy sauce
but maybe something like star anise? Or
maybe fish sauce? Well, play with it.
This then, concludes my post on the Chinese New Year – The
Year of the Rooster. I hope it's a good
year for you all but just know it will be a while before I get around to making
another dish in honor of the occasion as next year is the year of the dog
and....no. Nope. Enjoy your chicken!
Cock-A-Doodle-Do-Da
Casserole – serves 8 to 10
4 cups cubed cooked chicken
¾ cup dry white wine
2 cans (10 oz. each) cream of chicken soup
1 cup sour cream
1 pkg. noodles, cooked and drained
2 cans (14 oz. each) artichoke hearts, drained and coarsely
chopped
1 can (14 oz.) pitted ripe olives, halved
½ cup chopped pimento
½ cup slivered green pepper
1 large onion, finely chopped
1 cup grated Parmesan cheese
Mix wine, soup, and sour cream and set aside. Butter a 13 x 9 inch baking dish.
Starting with the noodles, layer the noodles, chicken,
artichoke hearts, olives, pimento, green pepper and onion. Add the wine, soup, and sour cream
mixture. Top with the Parmesan
cheese. Refrigerate overnight if
desired. (Ann's Note: Nope, not desired!)
Bake in a 350F oven for approximately 45 minutes.
Chicken Noodle Soup –
2-6 servings
2 oz. vermicelli or noodle
2 ½ oz. chicken breasts (Ann's
Note: I wasn't sure whether to use
raw chicken breasts or not so I erred on cooking the chicken separately and
then adding it to the dish at the very end to warm it up.)
12 snow peas
¼ cup dried mushroom, soaked and shredded (Ann's Note: dried mushrooms are expensive so I used
fresh.)
1/3 cup caned bamboo shoots, cut into strips
¼ cup carrot, cut into strips
7 cups chicken stock
1/3 cup ham, cut into strips
1 tablespoon salt
Pepper
MSG (monosodium glutamate) (Ann's
Note: see discussion of MSG above)
Cut chicken, snow peas, mushrooms, bamboo shoots, carrots
and ham into thin strips.
Drop vermicelli into boiling water and boil for 5
minutes. (Ann's Note: this is less time than normal for
fully-cooked vermicelli.) Drain, rinse and drain again. Set aside.
Bring chicken stock to boiling point. Add chicken meat, ham, snow peas, mushroom,
bamboo shoots and carrot. Cook for 2
minutes. Add seasonings and cooked vermicelli and boil for 1 minute over medium
heat.
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