Happy New Year!
Chinese New Year, that is.
This year, we decided to celebrate the Chinese New Year instead of Valentine's Day. So far, the solar new year hasn't been overly kind to us, so I figured, "Hey, why not give the lunar new year a try?"
It's traditional in China, much like it is here, to have a celebration on New Year's Eve. Usually, this celebration takes the form of an extravagant dinner. Since we're always up for an extravagant dinner, we decided to give it a go.
To get our Chinese New Year started, my husband and I embarked on a cultural adventure and visited an Asian market for the first time. This turned out to be a very interesting and very fortunate shopping trip. For a store that focuses on Asian cuisine, the cultural diversity of the other shoppers we encountered was impressive. We discovered that the Asian market has excellent prices on certain types of produce. Most notably, I found fresh ginger for less than half the price I would typically pay for it. I unashamedly admit that I have a love affair with ginger, so this was extremely exciting. Another point of interest was the seafood department, which featured tanks of live fish. I had never seen a live tilapia previously, and found that they looked strikingly similar to the Convict Cichlids that I kept in my aquarium not so long ago, albeit quite a bit larger. Sometimes the line between pets and food is not so wide as we might like to think!
Some parts of the Asian market were absolutely boggling to my Western mind. For instance, there was an entire aisle devoted to soy sauce in more varieties than I knew existed. But even that paled in comparison to the selection of noodles. There were two full aisles devoted to noodles! One side of each aisle was devoted to rice noodles and wheat noodles, respectively, and the other side of each aisle was lined with an impressive array of instant noodles in packets and cups. I have never seen so many noodles in my entire life.
It was in the freezer section, however, where I found heaven- an entire row of freezer doors dedicated to Dim Sum. In particular, I was attracted to the several varieties of steamed buns, the likes of which have often enticed me to spend money I don't have to go to my favorite Chinese buffet (which is my favorite Chinese buffet specifically because it serves steamed buns). Now I can enjoy custard buns, peach buns, and red bean buns fresh from the steamer in my own home. Nothing has made me happier in quite some time.
Once home with all our purchases, we proceeded to deep clean our kitchen and living room. Cleaning your home thoroughly is traditional for the Chinese New Year, because it represents cleaning out all the previous year's bad luck and making room for good fortune in the new year. I even vacuumed behind the couch!
I can easily say that this was the most ambitious culinary excursion that I have ever embarked upon. Together, we prepared a four course meal. The first course was fairly easy- all we had to do was stick the pre-made eggrolls into the oven, and I whipped up some sweet and sour dipping sauce. For the second course, we made pork dumplings for wonton soup. The dumplings were particularly delicious. For the main course, we served a triad of Szechuan green beans, Chow Mein, and honey chicken. I'll admit that the sauce for the chow mein could use some improvement, but the green beans and honey chicken easily rivaled most Chinese restaurants I've been to. For dessert, of course, we had steamed custard buns. And to wash it all down, we made boba tea (or bubble tea, in English)- actually Taiwanese, but we wanted to give it a try. I enjoyed the texture of the tapioca pearls, but my husband decided that he prefers not to have to chew his beverages.
In all, the preparation for this meal took nearly three hours, but it was well worth it. We ate our meal at the coffee table, sitting on the floor, in order to approximate an Asian dining style (actually, we sit on the floor to eat our meals every day, but we usually don't bother to use the table). I decorated the table beforehand with red and white cloths and candles, so it was really a lovely dinner.
Our Chinese New Year turned out to be a very tasty and very enlightening cultural experience. But the absolute best part of it?
Leftovers!