Issue 059 - Reflect Magazine

10 Chinese New Year
Burns’ Night 11
Celebrate Chinese Style
On January 23rd, it’s the Chinese New Year,
the most important of the Chinese holidays.
It’s a time of feasting with the family,
celebration, fireworks and gift-giving.
As the Chinese calendar is based on the
lunar year, the date of Chinese New Year
changes every year. The Chinese calendar
follows a 12-year pattern, with each year
named after an animal.
There are several legends to explain this,
but Reflect’s favourite is about an animal
race, organised by the Jade Emperor, in
which the first twelve animals to cross the
fast flowing river would be the winners and
they would each have a year of the zodiac
named after them.
The winning animals were, in order, the Rat,
Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse,
Goat, Monkey, Rooster, Dog, and finally the
Boar. Unfortunately, the Cat missed out as
the mean Rat, who was riding on the back
of the Ox with the cat, had pushed him into
the water; the Cat was very angry with the
Rat and since then cats have never been
friends with rats.
To help you celebrate the Year of the Tiger,
Reflect have once again asked our resident
chef, Neil Walker, to come up with a
delicious recipe…
Hong Kong Style Sweet & Sour
Chicken with Chow Mein Noodles
When I was asked to write this recipe
for Chinese New Year, I struggled to think
exactly what to do! I don’t really cook
Chinese food here at the restaurant and
I didn’t want to just copy something from
a recipe, so I thought back to my days as
a Navy Chef, cooking ‘en-masse’ for 1,000
hungry lads on the aircraft carrier – HMS
Invincible.
This recipe always went down well as it is
full of flavour and texture, plus it used to
be so easy to prepare in advance. Ok, so it
might not be true to its origins - I’m sure
Chinese chefs don’t use tomato ketchup
and golden syrup! - but it was all we had on
board at the time!
Try and be really organised and have
everything chopped, measured out and
ready to go as timing is essential in this
dish…
Ingredients
For the noodles:
1 packet of dry noodles
1 onion, sliced
4 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp fish sauce
For the chicken:
4 chicken breasts
2 tbsp corn flour
½ tsp salt
1lt vegetable oil
For the sauce:
3 tbsp vinegar
1 green and 1 red pepper, cubed
1 onion, diced
1 small tin of pineapple rings, diced
2 tbsp golden syrup
4 tbsp tomato ketchup
½ pint orange juice
1 garlic clove, crushed
2 tbsp corn flour
Method
Step 1 – make the noodles
1. Fry the onion in a little vegetable oil for 2
minutes. Cook noodles according to packet
instructions.
2. Drain the noodles and add to the pan with
the soy and fish sauce and cook for a few
minutes.
Step 2 – make the sauce
1. Heat the vinegar, syrup, ketchup, orange
juice and garlic in a saucepan and bring to
the boil.
2. Mix the corn flour with a little water,
gradually adding to thicken the sauce.
3. Add the peppers, onions and pineapple and
simmer gently for 5 minutes.
Step 3 – make the chicken
1. Heat the vegetable oil in a large wok or
saucepan.
2. Dice the chicken breast into 1 inch cubes
(approx) and toss in the corn flour and salt,
coating the chicken evenly.
3. Fry off the chicken in two batches for
approx 3 minutes and drain on kitchen paper
– cut 1 piece in half to check if it’s cooked.
Step 4 – serve and enjoy
1. Serve the noodles and spoon over the
sauce, then top with the crispy chicken.
Celebrate In
Style – Burns’
Night
Wednesday 25th January 2012 is
Burns’ Night, an annual celebration of
Scotland’s national poet Robert Burns,
who was born on this day in 1759.
Burns Night celebrates the life and
works of this world-renowned poet
and is, in fact, more widely observed
by Scots than Scotland’s official
national day, Saint Andrew’s Day.
Ingredients:
150g plain flour
Pinch of salt
100g butter (room temperature)
50g caster sugar - plus 1tsp for sprinkling
Method:
1. Pre-heat the oven to 160°c/gas mark 3.
2. Sift the flour into a bowl then add the sugar and butter.
3. Using your fingertips, rub the butter into the flour and
A Brief History of
Robert Burns
Born in the village of Alloway, two miles
south of Ayr, Robert Burns was given a
relatively good education, thanks to his
tenant farmer parents, Willian Burnes and
Agnes Broun. He began to read avidly
and was particularly inspired by the works
of Alexander Pope, Henry Mackenzie and
Laurence Sterne. The young Burns turned his
attention to his passion for poetry, nature,
drink and women after the hard, physical
labour of the family farm took its toll.
Burns fathered twins with the woman who
would eventually become his wife, Jean
Armour. However, Burns nearly emigrated to
the West Indies, with lover Mary Campbell
(his Highland Mary), after a rift with Jean.
Only the sudden death of Mary, combined
with the success of his first published
collection, kept him in Scotland.
At just 27, Burns had become famous
across Scotland, with poems such as To
a Louse, To a Mouse and The Cotter’s
Saturday Night. Shortly after, he arrived in
Edinburgh, where he remained until 1788.
Illicit relationships and fathering
illegitimate children ran parallel to this
productive period in his working life.
His correspondence with Agnes 'Nancy'
McLehose resulted in the classic Ae Fond
Kiss, while a collaboration with James
Johnson led to a long-term involvement in
The Scots Musical Museum.
However, in just 18 short months, Burns had
spent most of the wealth, so in 1789 he
began work as an Excise Officer in Dumfries
and resumed his relationship with wife Jean.
The hard work entailed with this new job,
combined with the toil of his earlier life and
dissolute lifestyle, took their toll on Burns's
health; he died on 21st July 1796, aged
just 37. He was buried with full civil and
military honours, on the very day his son,
Maxwell, was born.
Burns’ Night
The Burns Supper is an institution of Scottish
life; it’s a night to celebrate the life and
works of the national Bard. Suppers can
range from an informal gathering of friends,
to a huge formal dinner full of pomp and
circumstance.
The basic format of a Burns Supper
starts with a general welcome and
sugar-as if you were making pastry. When the butter has
been thoroughly mixed in, start to clump it together with
your hands until you get a smooth, cake like mass.
4. Press into a 20cm cake tin (no need to line or grease
the tin first) using your knuckles or the back of a spoon and
gently press out the shortbread to fit the tin in an even layer.
5. Oven gloves on, put the tin in the centre shelf of the
oven and cook for approx 20 minutes until it begins to take
on the faintest of colour.
6. Oven gloves on again, remove the tin from the oven and
stand on a wire rack for 15 minutes to harden up.
announcements, followed with the Selkirk
Grace. After the grace, comes the piping
and cutting of the haggis, where Robert’s
famous Address To a Haggis is read and
the haggis is cut open. The event usually
allows for people to start eating just after
the haggis is presented. This is when the
reading, called the immortal memory, an
overview of Robert's life and work, is given;
the event usually concludes with the singing
of Auld Lang Syne.
The humorous highlight of any Burns Supper
comes in the form of a toast, designed to
praise the role of women in the world today.
This should be done by selective quotation
from Burns’ works and should build towards
a positive note. The toast concludes: To the
Lassies!
For more info on Robert Burns and Burns’
Night, visit www.robertburns.org
Information taken from
www.bbc.co.uk/robertburns
To help you get into the spirit of things on
Burns’ Night, Reflect have once again roped
in our resident chef, Neil Walker to give us
a delicious and simple Scottish recipe for
shortbread…
7. Sprinkle the shortbread with the teaspoon of sugar. With
a knife, cut the shortbread in half, then half again, then cut
the quarters into half.
8. Allow the shortbread to cool completely before removing
from the tin, so it becomes firm and brittle.
Neil can be found at Appetite within Abbey Sports & Leisure
Club, 70 Slater Street (off Frog Island), Leicester LE3 5AS. If
you’ve got any feedback on this recipe, nutrition questions,
or ideas you’d like to share, why not email Neil at
appetite@abbeysports.co.uk