Viet World Kitchen

Simple Stir-Fried Pea Tips Recipe and Buying Guide

I have a love-hate relationship with pea tips. When they are perfect, shot through with tenderness and spring-fresh pea flavor, I’m in a state of bliss. But they are an iffy vegetable to buy, a potential pain in the butt. If you’re not thorough in prepping them or buy a bag full of mature tips, you end up with a stir-fry riddled with dental floss-like pieces. Sometimes the pea tips resemble damp toothpicks. In other words, you don’t want to eat them because you can’t chew them. Pea tips thrill but can frustrate.

What are pea tips? A variety of snow pea that’s grown only for its tender tips. Sold at Chinese markets, they’re called dou miao in Mandarin. Pea tips look like pea vines but they only grown a foot or two; they are not trellised. (If you want to grow pea tips, here is a seed source.)

A few years back, I visited with an Asian-American farmer who explained that harvesting pea tips is very time consuming.  To get a bag of good tender ones you have to be careful and knowledgeable when snipping. She showed me some plants in a hot house and while they all looked the same to me, they were over the hill to her. We had to squat to get at them. Pea tips are a bargain at $3 to $5 a pound, given the amount of labor that’s required to get them to market.

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.

Roasted Kabocha and Vegetable Dumplings Recipe

I’ve had pumpkin dumplings in Monterey Park and Beijing, their pretty tangerine-colored filling of grated winter (hard) squash were unpleasantly bland and sometimes undercooked. It’s an Asian dumpling that I’ve let simmer on the back burner for a while and didn’t tackle till this week, when faced with leftover roasted kabocha squash. My husband Rory said, “Let’s make Italian raviolis with the kabocha.”

I responded with this dumpling filled with roasted squash, earthy shiitake and parsnip, and upbeat celery. The seasonings involve fried shallot, lots of ginger and enough garlic for pungent depth. I wanted the ingredients to support and elevate the natural sweetness of the kabocha. I’d planned on adding soy sauce but in the end, there was so much great flavor from the vegetables that the only seasoning I added was salt. 

In other words, gluten-free dumpling eaters, this filling is for you too! No need to get the wheat-free tamari out. See the link at the end of this post for gluten-free dumpling dough options.