February 10, 2026

Happy Lunar New Year! Four Seas Crispy Chicken & Family Listens

By Erin Murphy

Ring in the Year of the Fire Horse with a delicious meal, and great audiobooks that entertain while they educate about the traditions various cultures have to celebrate the Lunar New Year!

The Four Seas Crispy Chicken from Mister Jiu’s in Chinatown by Brandon Jew and Tienlon Ho requires a little bit of planning ahead (dry-brining, anyone?), so press play to listen as a family while you prep.

“I always thought my grandfather Yeh Yeh disapproved of me cooking. But the week after I signed the lease to take over the Four Seas space, he gave me a clipping from the San Francisco Chronicle that he had carefully saved in a filing cabinet for fifteen years. It was the recipe for **Four Seas Whole Crispy Skin Chicken (金牌炸子雞) by Chef Jing Yu Tan**, which called for salting, blanching, and then at least a day of basting with maltose (a wheat-and-soy-based syrup) and red rice vinegar to get a crackly, golden skin. Before that moment, it hadn’t totally registered that all those papers in Yeh Yeh’s cabinet, all those books stacked around his recliner, were recipes and cookbooks.”

Pair your New Year feast with a stories the whole family will love

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