Chinese New Year Recipes!

Chinese New Year is just around the corner. We usher in the year of the horse this Friday! That means Thursday night is New Years Eve, which is when families gather to enjoy a huge feast together. The type of food heavily depends on the region. Some make dumplings and noodles, others have hot pot, and others just enjoy a huge assortment of all types of dishes.

As the years go by, it’s fun to look back to see how I celebrated each year. It’s all over the place!

Like in 2010, merely months after Tiny Urban Kitchen was christened, I wrote a fun post about the symbolism behind the various dishes that are often eaten during this time of year. I put up a little gallery of Asian recipes that year.

And then it was the year of the rabbit, where I expanded the gallery quite a bit, to the point it became the starting point for the Asian Food Gallery now on the blog.
  
In 2012, the year of the dragon, I celebrated the way my family did growing up, a fun hot pot to usher in the new year. Turns out we weren’t the only ones with the bright idea. The Chinese supermarkets were cleaned out of the pre-sliced meat by the time I got there, which meant we had to cut up some of our USDA prime steaks from the freezer! I learned that day I still prefer filet mignon steak over New York Strip when it comes to hot pot.
In 2013, the year of the Snake, Boston got a HUGE snowstorm over the Chinese New Year weekend (ha ha, what’s new?). We were stuck at home, thankful that we had heat, water, and electricity. Having no access to any supermarkets, we didn’t have a particularly Chinese meal that year. Instead, I cleaned out my freezer and made hearty dishes like lamb osso bucco with saffron rice and gremolata, Nobu’s famous miso black cod, and noodles with Taiwanese meat sauce.

So what about 2014?

This year, I plan on making hundreds of dumplings using this recipe.

If I’m really ambitious, I may even try making my own wrappers. We’ll see how tired I am by Thursday!

More Asian Recipes
One thing I did notice while reflecting back this year is that it’s been a long time since I’ve posted Asian recipes. And that makes me really sad!

My original reason for starting this blog was to keep track of all the recipes I was learning from my mom. Now, sometimes the blog resembles a Boston restaurant blog; other times it seems like a travel blog. Although I still love all those aspects, I want to preserve the original purpose of the blog as well.

So, I’ve resolved to post more recipes, especially Asian recipes.

I think I got sidetracked from cooking Asian food this entire year because I was part of a CSA from Siena Farms. Even though it was a fantastic experience, I basically never needed to go shopping for Asian produce. I was busy enough trying to cook the weekly box of veggies being delivered to my door!

I made a lot of autumn soups, spring pestos, and summer salads.