Viet World Kitchen

Guide to Lucky Sweets for Lunar New Year

Feeling rushed to get something together for Lunar New Year? You’re not alone. It’s part of the fun and excitement of celebrating major holidays. On the other hand, come Sunday, you can slither into the Year of the Snake with a simple sweet and warm cup of tea. Sit down and contemplate the year to come.

Pick your lucky fruit(s). This holiday typically means lots of fruit displays. I keep it to a minimum with tangerines. This year, a friend shared a bag of mandarin oranges grown by her father in Fresno. Sweet as candy, they’re better than store bought! I’m thankful for my friend Diane’s generosity.

Many Viet people go all out for special Tet lucky fruit trays. You’re suppose to make a sculpture with 5 (lucky number!) types of fruit and set them on your ancestral altar.  We never had that when we were growing up because we focused on preparing traditional Viet foods. My parents, ardent Catholics, say their daily rosary in front of portraits of my grandparents. I figure that we’re covered year-round.

Why Vietnamese Tet is for Home Cooking

Every year, I look forward to the week leading up to the Lunar New Year – Tet Nguyen Dan, or just Tet, as we call it in Vietnamese. Why? For the simple reason that I take time off to make some of my favorite traditional Viet foods. Many of us rush around these days, barely catching our breaths to meet deadlines, only to face new ones. Multitasking, I’ve learned, is overrated.

When Tet comes along, I shut down and shut out the world for a few days. Tune out and focus on cleaning, cooking, and celebrating. Vietnamese Tet is a low-key, family-oriented holiday. It's homey by nature and people love it. Tet is like Christmas, Thanksgiving, Mother's Day and Father's Day all wrapped up into one. Traditionally, people took off a month from work. Modern times don't allow for that and we all create our own new traditions. 

My Tet ritual starts at Asian grocery stores. I try not to brave the weekend crowds at Chinese and Vietnamese markets and instead go there on a weekday. That way, I get to look at all the crazy sweets and snacks that are for sale for new year. They’re usually well positioned near the market’s entrance so you can’t miss them.

Year of the Snake: Lucky Dumpling Party Tips

When it comes to Chinese astrological signs, I suck. While I know my own – I straddle the curious monkey and preening rooster who cooks well, I don’t take it all that seriously. Some people are dialing it in for the upcoming Year of the Black (or Water) Snake, which starts on February 10. By some accounts, it will be one of instability and extremities but will generate overall peace and prosperity. I feel like that is my life in the main.  

Through web searches, I found out that snakes are sexy, lucky, and wise, albeit inclined to a certain measure of laziness. Famous snakes include Pablo Picasso, Audrey Hepburn, Jackie Onassi, and Brooke Shields. Snakes gets along well with roosters, oxes, horses, sheep, and dogs. If you’re a rat, tiger, rabbit, or dragon, you’ll be an okay friend of a snake. Monkeys and snakes tend to create too much drama. I’m kinda covered during 2013, I suppose.

This stuff is lots of yin-yang, good and bad, lighthearted fun. I read Chinese astrological signs like I read my daily horoscopes. Their ambiguity offers constant life lessons. If they were spot on, I’d head to Vegas during my “four-star” days.

That said, it’s always good to start a new year with a positive outlook. I make my plans for Tet (Vietnamese Lunar New Year) around the 3 C’s: cleaning, cooking, and celebrating. Since I am usually not with my family, I invite close friends over for a feast. More often than not, there are dumplings on the menu. I occasionally make an entire menu of dumplings and invite friends over to help out.

Soy-Glazed Black Pepper Chicken Recipe (The Hakka Cookbook)

One of the most interesting Asian cookbooks released this year had no color photographs. Yes, no food porn was in The Hakka Cookbook by Linda Lau Anusasananan. In an era where readers love to cook with their eyes, it was a gutsy move on UC Press to publish a cookbook only graced by simple watercolors. Without photos to distract, you have to read and flip each page (imagine that!), following the author’s journey through a cuisine and culture.

The Hakka Cookbook may seem like it’s for Chinese food geeks -- there are maps, Chinese characters and Romanized pinyin Mandarin. The book begs you to spend time with it. Once that you start looking at it, you’ll be stuck in your chair for at least a good hour. You’ll pick out familiar dishes seen on Chinese restaurant menus.

Rethinking Tofu and Miso with Bourdain and Chang’s “The Mind of a Chef”

“When someone doesn’t like tofu or they feel like that it’s gross, I immediately assume that they’re some hardcore neo-conservative,” says David Chang, the chef and owner of the Momofuku restaurant group. Chang makes that provocative statement partway through the soy episode of The Mind of a Chef, a new PBS food and travel series produced and narrated by Anthony Bourdain.

Unlike many of the modern cooking shows, this one is punctuated by jokes (Chang says fart twice in this episode), profanity, and traditional as well as innovative cooking techniques. There is no loud screaming or overly staged dramatic situations. It’s as if you’re hanging out with Chang. The shows are smart.

I was planning to post a Burmese tofu recipe when I read a tweet from Xena N (@bowlfulofcomfor) about the segment. I stopped what I was doing and watched. In 23 minutes, the soy episode of The Mind of a Chef touches on a whole host of issues related to food, culture, and society. 

At the core, Bourdain and Chang say to viewers: Don’t think of tofu and miso simply as what vegetarians order instead of a steak. They are more than that. Here’s the full episode, available until December 22, 2012 on PBS.org: