The Reckless Chef

Happy Chinese New Year! I’m not Chinese, but it’s the Year of the Rat, and I was born in a Year of the Rat, so why not celebrate this one with great food?

I borrowed a few recipes from Jaden over at Steamy Kitchen.

First, I tried out the Garlic Scallion Noodles (original recipe found at that link). I definitely should have brought a copy of the photo from Jaden’s site, because I bought way larger noodles. I also left out the fish sauce, because I could only find it in giant bottles, and I don’t have that much use for fish sauce. They tasted very good, though!

Click to enlarge the noodles.

Then, I made Ancient Chinese Secret Fried Rice (again, click the link for the original recipe). I couldn’t find Chinese sausage, so I decided to leave that out - chicken was a great fit, though! I also fudged an ingredient or two…I couldn’t find rice wine, so I went with rice vinegar, and it tasted just fine. Also, I think I went a little heavier with the soy. My rice turned out quite a bit darker!

Click to make that rice fluffier.

And since it’s the Year of the Rat, I made little rat-cookies.

Click to meet my rat friend up close.

The only photo you get of this guy is from before he went in the oven. Why? Well…there was an incident. Mere moments after he and his rat friends had been iced with beautiful grey-blue icing fur and pink icing feet, ears, and tails, and little icing eyes and whiskers (they were beautiful little rats), someone dropped the baking sheet and those perfect little rats ended up face-down on the kitchen floor. Yeah. Well, if I’m not going to catch fire, I’m probably going to drop something, right?

Lucky for me, I had some 312 available to mourn the loss of my little Rat Pack: