UnRecipe: Enter the Dragon

I know we just rang in the new year on January first, but now you get to ring it in again, twice as loud, with three times the food. And I'm especially excited as it's literally my year, along with many other lucky little Dragons out there. It's Lunar New Year, and it's Year of the Dragon, baby!

Get your dumplings on, it's New Years! - Photo by Wasabi Prime

I don't really do a big Chinese New Year celebration mostly because... well, I'm not Chinese (not that it matters), and it's usually just the Mister and myself for those several days of feasting, so a big multi-course meal for the two of us seems extravagant. But I try to do little things, like make homemade dumplings, just to get into the spirit of the season. I always go back to my staple, a copy of Andrea Nguyen's Asian Dumplings, a great cookbook that has several dumpling skin and dough recipes. She focuses on as much of the dough as the filling, and that's half the trick, having the dumpling itself be the right consistency and have flexibility to seal everything up soundly. A lot of dumpling books suggest using store-bought skins, which is fine in a pinch, but I was feeling the craving for pan-fried dumplings, called sheng jian baozi in Shanghai, similar to gyoza or potstickers in Japan. It's basically dumplings filled with meat and vegetables, wrapped in dough, sealed up into a pouch, then pan-fried. Gyoza tend to just have the bottom part of the dumpling browned, then steam-finished, with a little water put into the hot pan to help release the dumpling from the surface. The Chinese equivalent usually winds up being a rounded patty, seared on both sides in a hot pan.

I made a batch of the basic dumpling dough from Andrea's book and cooked up some leftover cabbage and vegetables I had in the fridge to stuff into each little dumpling. Yes, just vegetables, not even pork -- outrage, I know. I could have been more of a slave to the traditional filling, but the thing I like best about dumplings is the fact you can fill it with whatever you want, and it's the perfect solution for taking care of oddball vegetable scraps. Heaven knows we're still nibbling through a fridge full of oddball ingredients, and that included a lone bag of cole slaw vegetables. Don't ask why we had it, I didn't even remember why I bought it, but there it was, a wealth of shredded cabbage. Woo -- party!


Asian New Year for all - quick Korean style bibimbap - Photos by Wasabi Prime

While I could have stuffed my face all day with crispy pan-fried dumplings -- and don't get me wrong, I totally would if I could -- I made another dish full of vegetables. I love the Korean dish bibimbap, which is typically a combination of different vegetables and cooked meat, tossed in a spicy sauce, served over rice and topped with a marvelous fried egg. Yet another case of Put an Egg On It, but this logic is sound, because this logic is delicious, as the runny yolk just adds richness to the food. In a situation where you want a fast meal, bibimbap is one quick-fix that most people could throw together with things in their fridge and pantry. We had a variety of vegetables from our CSA box, I had some scraps of turkey, so I cooked everything up in a skillet and made a finishing sauce that included ko-chu-jang, a hot bean paste that you typically find at Asian markets, in the Korean foods section. It's seriously the bomb-diggety of flavor and I love using it. The salt content is scandalously high, but it's Asian food, so of course it's packed with sodium and likely MSG. But I don't care, I love this paste because just a little dab of it mixed into your stir fry will add a shot of savory as well as heat. I like black bean paste, which is more common in Chinese cooking, but it's got a deeper flavor and not the heat that I was looking for, so if I want a kick, I go with ko-chu-jang.

Celebrating the new year in little ways at the house of Wasabi - Happy 2012, Dragons! - Photos by Wasabi Prime

Definitely not a traditional way of celebrating Chinese New Year, more like Celebrating Year of the Wasabi, cooking up some things I like to eat. And it was a nice excuse to make a fresh batch of dumpling dough, a reminder that it's not that much extra work and you get so much more out of the result. The dough is more elastic, less likely to break if it's overstuffed (which I always do), and it cooks up beautifully, crisping in the pan but still staying tender and delicate. Regardless of whether or not you celebrate Lunar New Year, a new year is all about fresh starts, being ready to tackle new things and also continuing to find ways to celebrate the things we love, so this meal being a mix of old and new, was a good way to start the year on a good foot. To all those fellow Dragons out there, let's totally rock 2012!

Mixed Plate: The Last Days of 2010 and How I Learned to Embrace the Void

I'm likely still sifting through the Christmas photos I just took and probably prepping our New Year's Eve dinner, but that's not why I chose a photo from when 09 became 10 to herald the last post of 2010. If you're wondering what the heck this thing is, it's a tower of rice cakes or mochi, and a Japanese symbol for entering the new year. It's been said that life works in cyclical ways, and so it's got this Wasabi looking back as much as she's looking forward into 2011, and the magical, mystical tour called Life that lies ahead.

New Years mochi tower hollaback, when 2009 met 2010 - Photo by Wasabi Prime

Would it be safe to say it's been a hell of a year? Yes, I think so. We've all had our share of up's and down's, and while it's easy to dwell on the things that didn't work out the way we'd planned (what, no discovery of cold fusion yet?? PFAIL!), there's something to be said in placing value on what was accomplished and how that will shape the challenge of what's to come.

I can only speak for myself, but I can say 2010 has been memorable. Every day was like a little race and every month felt like climbing a small mountain...wondering if a Yeti was going to devour you come Monday morning. This was the year I went to work full-time for myself. The hours are long and the pay kinda sucks for the time you spend both doing and drumming up work, along with following extra pursuits like blogging, but it's probably been the most rewarding thing I've done. This was the year I learned to embrace The Void. That sounds scary and forlorn, but it's an eye-opening experience to step outside of a comfort zone and dare to pursue an unknown future where the only person you really have to answer to is the one staring back at you through the mirror. Cue Michael Jackson's Man in the Mirror (Sham-on!). You make the choice to not view it as a dark, spooky tunnel ahead, but simply a blank book waiting to be filled with whatever shenanigans come your way, no writer's block allowed. The just-keep-moving attitude yielded several incredible things, including getting published in a cookbook, getting regular spots in different publications for my writing and photography, and continuing as a graphic designer.

The passion for food, while significant, is not the center of my world, and that's good, because I don't want to just be about one thing; I sorta enjoy being pulled in multiple directions at once, as it keeps my brain from going stagnant. Focusing on food was a great reminder that the enjoyment and pursuit of meaningful edible experiences is a great analogy for living well and mindfully every day. The greatest lesson I took from the year was to live as much in the present as possible. For me, the preparation of food forced me to slow down and take note of things. The distractions that a more comfortable but predictable life once offered had been removed, so when you stared into that nothingness of possibilities, a funny little voice emerged from the darkeness saying, What are you lookin' at? Get off your lazy backside and do something. Motivation can be a cranky bugger.
Sure, this Void sure sounds like a kooky place, fraught with as much reward as there is panic. And it's not been without a few sacrifices, but  it's both liberating and a bit of a relief to realize what you can let go of (vacations, hopes for a nicer car, extra booze money), in lieu of what you inevitably gain (resourcefulness, sense of well-being). So I don't have a lot of clear ideas for what the new year will bring, but that's okay. My only hope that I stare into The Void of 2011 and seek to achieve more creative goals while managing to keep the bills paid.

Last year around this time, I took the photo above of the celebratory New Year or shogatsu mochi, with a bit of fearfulness over what 2010 would bring. I bought this year's satsuma orange (with the stem and leaf this time!) and will place it upon the same eerily-preserved mochi tower. But this time, I'm glad to say, there's a lot less fear and a lot more hope. Happy New Year, everybody.

No Fear in the New Year - Photo by Wasabi Prime