Happy Chinese New Year
 

Every year I go to a Chinese New Year Feast that is given by a pair of restaurants in the Lansdale area, Abacus and Yangtze Chinese Gourment.

Both are exceptional places to eat, and to enjoy Chinese food that is more elegantly prepared than is customary in this country. Of course, if you WANT Chow Mein, they'll make it for you, but it WILL be damn good Chow Mein.

Anyway, for the Chinese New Year Celebration, they provide a multiple course gourmet meal. I have also gone to the Chinese Cultural Center in Chinatown for theirs, I like Abacus/Yangtze better.

The restaurant is decorated for the occasion by one of the owners.

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So are the guests. The men have to wear cardboard "Happy New Year" hats, the women each receive a flapper headband with a plume.

Once you get over the indignity of wearing the headgear, they start bringing the grub ...

They started this year with Imperial Crab Soup. It was served in a coconut shell. I felt just like Mary Ann!!

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Then came the appetizers ... first New Year Chicken Cracker. It's meant to look like a British Christmas Cracker.

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Then Scallops with Sesame Seeds and X-0 Sauce. According to the waiter, "X-O" stands for "extra-ordinary". It's a mildly spicy sweet red sauce.

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The Giant Prawn stands proudly erect upon a bed of chinese vegetables.
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We decided that Imperial Duck on Lotus Bun was a Chinese Quesadilla. Except there wasn't any Queso. It was extremely tasty, though.

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The Grilled Sea Bass was accompanied by a kiwi fruit carved to look like a monkey's face. This got the whole Year of the Monkey Theme into the meal, without actually involving monkey. Most years, they serve something to complement the animal year, like for year of the ox, they served buffalo, year of the sheep they had lamb ... we were really worried about the monkey thing. We'd all seen Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
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The Filet Mignon was arranged to simulate stones of a waterfall, with a cascade of sauce and chinese broccoli. The whole thing was balanced on a pile of mashed taro, which has a starchy, potato-ey flavor.
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Dessert continued the monkey theme ... chocolate banana pie. Not traditional Chinese by any stretch of the imagination, but definitely good.

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*ahem* I'm on Atkins!! Thanks a lot. :)

Seriously though that looks like a good restaurant. I celebrated Chinese New Year by putting money in little red envelopes and giving it to a few kids, cooking food (Tuna Filet caught by a friend) with my soon-to-be inlaws, and playing cards. I tried calling my fiance all night but couldn't get through. Then when I was asleep, she got through and we talked.

I was born in the year of the Monkey. Technically I was born in 1969 which should be the year of the Cock, but I was born a week before Chinese New Year so I am at the end of 1968 on the Chinese Calander which makes me a monkey.

My fiance wants to get pregnant right after we get married so our child will also be a monkey.

I don't know if we should have kids immediately. I thought it would be nice to have a year or two where we can just enjoy each other. I sure wouldn't want to end up like one of those couples who divorce when their kids leave home because the kids were all they had in common.

Anyway I leave for Vietnam on Monday night and will be there for a month. I'll see if I can stop by an internet shop to check in with the cellar.

Have fun, and congrats...you big fucking monkey. :)

Chinese quesadilla ... jeez, desecrating my culture.

That's otherwise known as Peking duck. You've all seen them - hanging in windows of dirty chinese retaurants in Chinatowns from here to San Fran. If it's done well, it's SO damn good. Very hard to do at home though ... ducks needs to be roasted and then dried with a fan to get a really crispy outside.

When I was in china a few years ago, I saw ducks and chickens being roasted ... they use these massive semi-underground brick ovens and throw in several dozen birds that cook for a few hours. It wouldn't have been so bad, except there's not a whole lot of sanitation in China - we pulled up and parked our car literally right next to this "oven." Hope you don't mind your duck with a little CO2 (or MSG, same diff).

Oh, btw, monkeys are very lucky in chinese culture. It was kind of artificially inspired, but read up on the story of the Monkey King. He was this clever character that stirred a lot of trouble in ancient history, but his story is easily the best remembered in chinese folklore.

Hmmm....Monkey King.

Welcome back, breaking! We had been wondering what you'd been up to ... chasing down some fabulous lead undercover, no doubt ...

(or like many print reporters, were you doing your bi-yearly stint in rehab and had a blackout period?)

I have to reiterate that I was NOT responsible for the Chinese Quesadilla comment. I merely report it here. The perptrator was a new-ager with more experience of Hispanic foodstuffs than Chinese ... )

Looks really excellent
 

How much did that feast set you back? You decadent running dog!

I celebrated the New Year like any true Chinese person would: I enjoyed sex without procreating.

You LUCKY running dog you!

(Dinner was $45, including all the tea you can drink, BYOB, but this year the restaurant did provide complimentary half-bottles of wine.)

Well, for the amount of drugs and alcohol I've been taking in the past month, I'm surprised that I haven't been shipped away to rehab yet. Just a little holiday fun, the way my law school friend explained it to me. Yeah, we don't need more lawyers in this world.

I have been chasing down some good stories though; for those of you interested, we're doing a huge package on PA's labor force and biz economy and how fucked the state is in 10 years.

I did not have sexual relations on new years. But I did drink a ton of wine and tried to hump one of the waitresses at the restaurant. Score.