2006 Menu for
Gung Haggis Fat Choy™:
Toddish McWong's Robbie Burns Chinese New Year Dinner
- Celebrating the Year of the Dog

What:     Gung Haggis Fat Choy™ Dinner
When:    January 22, 2006 - Sunday
Time:     Doors open 5:15 pm - Dinner 6pm
Tickets:  Call Firehall Arts Centre
Advance Price:
$60 premium seating with wine
$50 regular seating
After January 7th - $70 Premium / $60 Regular

We had a lot of fun at last year's dinners with a) Opera Soprano Heather Pawsey b) serving Mayor Larry Campbell a haggis c) Joe MacDonald playing a Chinese flute d) Todd Wong, Joy McPhail, Jenny Kwan, Mayor Campbell and Shelagh Rogers reciting Burns poetry with e) Special guest co-host Shelagh Rogers joining Toddish McWong

This year's Gung Haggis Fat Choy™ media activities started off with an Nov 28th interview with the BBC Radio Scotland program "Scotland Licked!" with host Maggie Shiels. You can listen to Toddish McWong describe the origins of Haggis Won Ton, the Gung Haggis Fat Choy dinner, and the transformation of the Robbie Burns Poem "Address to a Haggis" into a rap song.  Always fun, always provative.  Toddish McWong continues to challenge notions of culture.

But how do you top Haggis Won Ton, and Haggis Lettuce Wrap?  With Haggis stuffed tofu?  maybe not....   but how about upping the ante with new performers?

Rick Scott and Harry Wong join the Gung Haggis Fat Choy™ clan for 2006.  Rick is an accomplished children's performer and folk musician with Pied Pumkin.  Harry is an accomplished magician and children's performer - seen globally on his Chinese language television show "Bean Town"

Our selections are not a real "traditional" Chinese New Year dinner menu - but a blending of favorites, and brand new fusion-fare.  It is created to help introduce "real Chinese banquet fare" to Scottish-Canadians and to help make "haggis" safe for Chinese-Canadians.

Here is the menu for 2006, subject to change at my whimsy and the kitchen's demands:

1 -  Appetizer Plate with Haggis Won Ton and Haggis Spring Rolls
Haggis Wun Tun was first created in September 2003 when I walked into New Town Restaurant in Chinatown with a Haggis from Peter Black's and asked them to make won tons for me to take to the CBC Radio reception to welcome Shelagh Rogers and "Sounds Like Canada" to Vancouver. We have featured Haggis Wun Tun and Haggis Spring Rolls on City Cooks with Simi Sara on City TV.

2- Shredded Jelly Fish, and other things. 
Shredded jelly fish - my farvorite!  Good balance of sea-rich nutrients and iodine.  Accompanied by "other things" such as wheat gluten imitation bbq pork and spicy tofu for the vegetarians.

3 - Hot & Sour Soup
Always a favorite for everybody - and vegetarian to boot!  Warms up the innards on a cold January night.  I am sure Burns would approve.

4 - Ginger Dungeness Crab
The West Coast equivalent to Lobster - Maybe we should call this dish Gold Mountain Lobster-equivalent...  Now the best way to eat crab is to have somebody else crack it and de-shell it for you.  If your husband, wife, boyfriend or girlfriend won't do this - invite somebody else.

5 - Sticky Rice Taro
I can hear the voices already saying... "What?"  As a kid attending family dinners, my favorite dish was always my mother's special sticky rice dish "noh-my-fan."  This dish was recently served at my grandmother's 95th birthday dinner and I LOVED it. Why the taro?  Why the haggis?  It's icky and slimy and better than tofu... well maybe it's worse.  But the Hawaiians love it.  And Hawaiian culture is Soooo multi-cultural!  Taro is the main ingredient of poi - their traditional starchy staple dish.  But the best way to have Taro is as "taro chips" - just like potato chips - but starchier.

6 - Curried Potatoes and Beef
This dish is for the Irish-Canadians in the crowd - the real meat and potatoes type of Canadians.  This was one of my favorite dishes growing up.  We always had it on Friday night dinners at the Ho Ho Restaurant in Vancouver's Chinatown.  Potatoes are not a traditional Chinese dish - but I think brought to BC by Irish and Scottish immigrants who had learned to harvest them after the New World colonists learned about them from the First Nations peoples.  Definitely a fusion dish from the 1950's and 1960's Chinatown cuisines.

7 a) - Haggis
You can't have a Robbie Burns Supper without Haggis... The first time I tried haggis - I gagged.  It reminded me of poi - the Hawaiian taro paste.  I put some haggis in with my rice... it wasn't bad.  I added sweet & sour sauce.  Plum sauce was great with it.  Then I learned that I didn't like the lard recipe haggis and there were many other haggis recipes.  My favorite is from Peter Black and Sons, found at Park Royal Shopping Centre in West Vancouver.  It is savoury with Peter's unique and special recipe. 

7 b)  Haggis Lettuce Wrap
Combine Haggis with a lettuce wrap.... people will think we are crazy.  Oops, we are crazy.  This is Gung Haggis Fat Choy™ Crazy!  Take a large spoonful of haggis, plunk it on a lettuce leaf, add the vegetarian filling, smother it with Hoi-Sin Chinese plum sauce, and voila - Another Toddish McWong culinary-fusion treat!  Actually we taste-tested haggis lettuce wrap last year, at the Flamingo a week before the Gung Haggis Fat Choy dinner - just to see what would happen... and it was G-O-O-D! but we were already committed to marketing the Haggis wun tun, so we saved it for 2005

9 - Special Vegetarian Chow Mein with Mushrooms and Onions (Always a Chinese New Year traditional dish, as the long noodles represent long life.  Sounds kind of superstitious to me.  Just remember the origins of Italian pasta go back to Marco Polo's journeys to China.  He was also probably the one who smuggled maps of Chinese naval voyages to Italy where they ended up with Christopher Columbus.  Every had the Chinese version of pizza?)

10 - Dessert  This will be a mix of puddings and pastries We do recognize that not everybody like to have red bean pudding after a banquet dinner.  Mango pudding and almond jello are my favorites.  We will definitely NOT have blood pudding - Go ye to a Scottish resturant for that stuff

Hope you enjoyed these delicious descriptions... 

Dinner & show starts promptly at 6:00pm.  Now with 600+ attending our dinner, the logistics of serving everybody at the same time are much more challenging then past dinners when we only served 100, 60 or even 16.

After meeting numberous challenges at the 2005 dinner, we have resolved many problems. 

1- Tickets will be mailed out, along with seating plans - to avoid queue lineups at the door.

2 - Patrons will be assigned table numbers and tickets will have the buyer's name + table number on it

3 - There will be 2 to 3 bars - available immediately at 5:30 pm.  There will also be 2 bottles of wine at the PREMIUM tables.  This hopefully will avoid the line up at the bars and ensure that everybody has drinks available.

The 2006 show will focus more on the performances and the food will be enjoyed when it shows up.  We will try to serve the food in groups of 2 or 3 courses at the same time.  This will avoid the lengthy pauses between performances that we had last year.  It is always a challenge working with a new restaurant, and getting our communication right. 

And of course... the entire program and menu is subject to change.  We do our best to create a fabulous meal and evening of entertainment.  And the best way is to be sensitive to the audience, the performers, and meeting any challenges that come our way.

I have brought together exciting new performers for 2006.  The appearance of both Rick Scott and Harry Wong together will be amazing!  Harry is like the "Raffi of Hong Kong" and he was inspired to learn to play the dulcimer by listening to Rick Scott records.  Rick, of course, is one-third of the celebrated folk trio Pied Pumkin with Shari Ulrich and Joe Mok.  Rick learned lots of stuff about half-Chinese issues from Joe, so Rick was prepared in advance to work with Harry Wong when they created the Juno nominated children's cd "The 5 Elements."

I look forward to sharing the surprises and joys of Gung Haggis Fat Choy™ 2006 with you!

Toddish

Ó 2006 Todd Wong