Year of the Rabbit

With six, you get egg roll

Happy Lunar New Year!

Here’s a personal piece I loved about Lunar New Year.

Chinese food has always meant comfort for me.

Besides picking up buckets of KFC, the only other food we, as an extended family, would pick up was Chinese. On our way to my grandparents’ house, Mom, Dad, and I stopped to pick up bags filled with little takeout boxes, soy sauce packets and hot mustard. The boxes contained a bit of everything to satisfy the eight of us accompanied by lots of rice and fortune cookies. I remember a brief moment of loving the spare ribs, my hands and face sticky from the sweet and salty glaze.

Once a year, my parents would take us out to eat at Asian Wok. I still remember what they’d order. Mom loved the sweet and sour chicken. Dad switched between Mu Gu Gai Pan and chicken subgum. They had egg rolls and won ton soup before the main dishes came. It was the only time I ever saw them splurge and order starters. I hardly ate anything. I’d order won ton soup, eat the dumpling part and hand it over to Mom or Dad to finish. I’d eat some rice with soy sauce. But multiple courses, international cuisine, a waiter serving us…it was out of the ordinary for us and I loved it.

At home, Mom threw pepper steak or chicken chow mein into the dinner rotation. Sometime when I was in junior high, we started to collect recipe pamphlets we’d find at the grocery store. They were like small magazines with different themes, muffins or breakfast or slow cooking. We bought one with Asian recipes and decided to try making some of those.

This was an event and probably the origin of what I now call project cooking. We chose a Saturday night to make our feast. We made a grocery list and started the hunt for the exotic ingredients we’d need. I still have the recipes we used in my Mom’s three-ring binders.

Mom somehow found shrimp chips and couldn’t wait to show me how to make those. The chips came in a clear plastic bag, little multi-colored hard discs. Mom heated up a big pot of oil on the stovetop for frying, something that we never did. She had me drop in a little pink disc and watch the magic happen. All of a sudden this disc turned into the familiar puffy, airy, chip I loved from our takeout. I was mesmerized.

From https://www.196flavors.com/shrimp-chips/

I’ve always wanted to be more skilled at cooking Asian dishes. (I do make a mean fried rice.) I tried some different recipes in anticipation of celebrating the lunar new year. I’m lucky to have a few Asian grocery stores nearby so I stocked up my pantry with oyster sauce, white pepper powder, sesame paste, and soy sauces.

I made General Tso’s chicken.

From The Woks of Life cookbook, I made lo mein.

I even tried making scallion pancakes. Project time! I am definitely making these again. They were a hit.

After writing this issue, I realized I haven’t had those Chinese spare ribs since I was a child. I think I’ve found the next project for my Asian cooking trials.

I care about you. Please don’t forget to eat your greens.