1/2 Chinese New Year

Barbecue pork is the Half-Chinese New Year standard that never burns, explodes, melts or otherwise causes people to evacuate the block.

This isn’t a traditional barbecue pork recipe. For those with European meat sensibilities, it is a recipe that will hurt you. This barbecue pork is marinated and cooked with a commitment to killing all pork flavor and texture.

Because I hate pork.

The dish is a favorite with our table’s pork loving regulars, but it is as reckless as a Misfits stencil on a motorcycle jacket.

Two pounds of pork loin, sliced into rounds or into long strips.

In a bowl mix:
A bottle of cheap, bad wine that boasts of oak chips and a prompt headache. The cheaper the better.
Hoisin (six heaping tablespoons, if not more)
Green onions two minced
Ginger - an inch of a root sliced rough
Garlic – two smashed, whole cloves
Dash of Black Pepper and Salt

Marinate pork for at least a day.

Before you grill or broil in the oven mix up a baste:
Mix a quarter cup of hot water with a quarter cup of honey and a tablespoon of soy sauce.

To make mustard for dipping:
Whimper inducing: mix Chinese mustard powder with cold water, soy and vinegar.

Wince inducing: mix English mustard (like the yellow tin Coleman’s) in hot water and leave out the vinegar.

Why bother: white mustard powder mixed with soy sauce, vinegar and a self-pitying sigh.

To cook the pork in the oven:
Turn the oven to broil. Set the pork on a roasting rack, or better yet, a cookie cooling rack. After 10 minutes baste the topside and let broil for another five minutes. Flip the pork over and let broil for another 10 minutes. Baste and let broil for five minutes.

To grill the pork:
10 minutes per side, baste with commitment and often.
The longer you grill the more the marinate (which becomes delightful) will appear.

Duck is the demon of half Chinese New Year.
In years past I have:
Set it on fire.
Encased it in rice cement.
Turned it into jelly.

The duck has never come out perfectly without causing property damage.

This year, because Chef Cannella’s CIA training won’t let me fail, I had a pretty good shot at the duck. Hours of idle chatter went into the cooking of the duck. Erik listened and gave input but for the most part he was the victim of Blather Assault, in which I went back and forth over steaming, baking and deep-frying or steaming, grilling and deep-frying the duck.

He had his comments based on years of professional experience. I had my ideas based on the tradition of duck failure. The duck occupied my thoughts and, because I am low on thoughts at the moment, I only got to a certain point with the thing. My ideas stopped squarely before a definitive execution.

This lead to a series of last minute decisions that every dinner party needs.

Because the end of every story is so much less interesting than the story itself, I’ll tell you how it turned out:

With flavor. Without crispiness. Without much fat.

The process:
Brine: 2 cups soy. Five cups water. Star anise. Five spice. Peppercorns. Splash of white vinegar. Salt. Brown sugar. 4 days.

Steam: hour and a half

Let sit and cool.

Quarter bird and remove ribcage.

Rub with salt, black pepper, five spice, green onion, garlic, sesame oil paste.

Let sit for another hour.

Grill for 10 minutes.

Serve.

This is what should have happened:
To make the skin crispy, separate the skin from the flesh before you brine it.
Brine for two days.
Let dry out for one with rub.
Braise until skin is crispy.
Bake for an hour and a half.

Stay tuned. We’re going to try again.

I'm writing about dessert first because it is the hardest and most finicky part of this year's menu.

Cooking Half Chinese New Year dinner is a two-day event. The barbecue pork is best if it has at least a day to marinate. The duck is less flammable if it luxuriates in a brine for 48 hours. The dipping sauces become more sophisticated if they have time to macerate.

Half Chinese dinner always tightens my veins with anxiety and to unlock my jaw I cook with a bottle of wine close at hand. I over-drink less if the prep work is done the day before.

Every year I try a new recipe. It’d be nice to be the kind of person who does only what they are confident in, but I am afraid the adrenalin withdrawal would put me into shock and I'd have nothing to talk about during dinner.

This year the question mark was Sesame balls with red bean paste. They’re a crispy, chewy, slightly sweet pastry that rarely sits on the dim sum cart for more than a couple of tables. They are a replacement for the ever-doomed festival dumplings I try to make. The desserts require the same ingredients but a different cooking execution – sesame balls are deep-fried and festival dumplings are boiled.

The half Chinese New Year Sesame Ball recipe.
(these are smaller balls, which are easier to deep fry and a dainty end to a large dinner)
Red bean paste from a can
2 cups glutinous rice flour
1.25 lbs of roasted, mashed sweet potato
1 cup brown sugar (you could go less on this one)
¼ cup water.
6 cups of frying oil (important to have more than less)
White sesame seeds.

Mix the flour and sweet potato together to form a lumpy kind of dough. Bring water and brown sugar to a hearty boil and add to dough. Let dough sit in refrigerator for an hour. You may have to add more rice flour but wait until everything cools and congeals a bit.

Pluck enough dough to make a ball one inch in diameter. Stick your thumb in the middle of the ball to form a pocket. Add a teaspoon of red bean paste. Close the dough up. Roll back into a ball. Roll the ball in the sesame seeds and set aside.

When you have made a dozen balls, heat up the oil. The oil wants to be 350°. Any hotter and the balls will be crispy on the outside and raw in the middle. Any cooler and you’ll stare at the wok as the sesame balls sit like dead goldfish at the bottom of the oil.

You’ll know the oil is the right temperature when your tester ball release little bubbles but don’t turn into little black orbs of evil.

Add four or five balls to the oil. Stir them often to maintain consistent cooking.

The balls are done when they rise to the surface and bob. They will be golden brown. Remove and place on a paper towel. Serve them immediately or refrigerate and heat in the oven (at 350°) for ten minutes before serving.

Its been an annual tradition for a decade now that come Chinese New Year I cook a large, unrelaxed, extravagant dinner– regardless of ability or funds.

The first dinner was small and on my mother’s boat. My friend Ben and I had New Year’s Chicken (Soy sauce chicken) and oranges.

Since then the dinners have gotten larger and harder. One year I followed the Chinese Court Banquet tradition of creating a course for every guest. That was thrilling.

I took a year off last year and there was a year in which I was dating a man who was allergic to garlic… but I vowed that I would do something this year.

Then I came down with vertigo. We postponed the dinner for tomorrow seasickness be damned. The menu is less adventuresome than years past, but I expect better results.

Traditionally one is supposed to eat vegetarian on Chinese New Year. But since my father is Chinese and my mother is not, I make a half Chinese New Year Dinner, which includes meat.

We are having:
Pea vines in garlic and a light oyster sauce
Long Beans in black bean and red pepper sauce
Spinach dumplings
Deep-fried bean curd

Shrimp and black mushroom dumplings
Barbecue Pork
Barbecue Duck

Sesame Balls with red bean paste

Seeing as I always have a duck disaster and seeing how this year I have vertigo this should be an interesting little dinner.