Can you believe it? Chinese New Year is less than a week away.On Monday, January 23, 2012, we will usher in the year of the dragon!Over the holiday break, I had the unique opportunity of getting together with cookbook author and video blogger Nina Simonds from Spices of Life and making a short video for Chinese New Year.
In the video, we show two different ways of making dumplings. I talk about how to make traditional Chinese dumplings (pork, leek, and napa). Nina shares here own creative take on the dumpling. Her deconstructed dumpling soup consists of meatballs (made with dumpling filling), pasta, and kale.
Some of you may remember the awesome garlic chicken with golden noodles that I made from Nina’s health-oriented book Spoonful of Ginger about 6 months ago. Nina has been writing Asian cookbooks for over two decades. She’s won countless awards for her books, and she recently just released a new one.
Hot off the presses, Simple Asian Meals just came out January 3, 2012. It’s a mixture of traditional Asian meals, Asian-inspired meals, and dishes influenced by Asian ingredients or philosophies. You’ll see a mix of various Asian influences, such as Vietnam, China, Singapore, and Japan. There’s even a dedicated vegetarian section. In general, the dishes are simple, healthy, and flavorful.
Nina has generously offered to give away THREE personally autographed books to Tiny Urban Kitchen readers.
To enter the giveaway, please comment below your answer to the following question: “What is your favorite Asian dish and why?”
One entry per person. Shipping to US addresses only. Giveaway ends this Friday, January 20, 2012 at midnight, EST.
Best of luck!
Disclaimer
The video and books are provided by Nina Simonds and Spices of Life
All Rights Reserved
Galbi – Korean short rib bbq
Pho!!
i like steamed bok choy with soy sauce. yummy and healthy
I love pho, but I also love bibimbap. I’m torn.
Soup dumplings! Not only are they delicious but they are also fun to eat!
So difficult to choose. But for this time of year, definitely pho ga, especially if I feel a cold coming on. It’s the ultimate comfort food.
I like anything with noodles and soy or hoison sauce. Also, love, love, love egg rolls!
I’ve made udon noodles and vegetables with almond sauce two weeks in a row now because it’s sooooo good; the fresh ginger and almond butter balance each other out so it’s not quite sweet but not overly spicy, either.
RAMEN
Din Tai Fung soup dumplings! Also, pretty much any noodle dish.
Love Pho! I have not cooked many Asian dishes so I would love the chance to try the recipes in this new cookbook!
My favorite Asian dish is Pho!! It’s like… last meal status. Or the steamed egg my grandmother makes or my mom’s braised ox tail. 🙂
winter melon soup – so light but filling and delicious!
Ma po tofu. Reminds me of a home cooked meal 🙂
So tough to choose a favorite! I love dumplings and noodles of all kinds, but I think congee is my favorite. It’s so creamy and comforting.
Chicken lo mein – it’s my comfort food!
I love pho. (and most everything Asian).
Just one? I guess it’ll have to be bo ssam… My mother-in-law makes the most amazing adaptation of David Chang’s recipe. You just can’t beat a huge hunk slow roasted pork with that amazing salty-sweet skin!
My favorite dish is when my mom makes pork spareribs and bamboo shoots (not the canned kind but the dried kind). Also pretty much anything with tofu skins (fu zok, dried beancurd) in them. It reminds me of home 🙂
Vegetarian Chinese buddhist food!
Oooh, this is tough. I would have to say that dim sum is my favorite with an emphasis on any kind of dim sum dumplings.
My favorite Asian dish has some kind of highly spiced beef in it. I love noodles with the highly spiced beef especially. It’s hard to choose this one thing, because I like chicken and pork as well. I love dumplings, too, which I am thrilled to see are the subject of this post. But the first item I mentioned is my absolute favorite.
sichuan eggplant hands down
Definitely red-cooked pork belly.
Anything cooked by my mom! But someone previously posted Vegetarian Chinese Buddhist food and I have to say I haven’t had any in years, but I love it!
So exciting! I’d love to try making dumplings. My favorite Asian dish would have to be something using tofu and a simple Asian sauce… so versatile and full of flavor.
Any soupy noodle dish! It incorporates two of the food items I love the most- noodles and soup. My favorite specific noodle dish would hands down be beef and tendon noodle soup.
Country beef chow fun!!!! With hot sauce of course…. Mmmmm good!!! It’s tasty and delicious flavor. Making me hungry now.
Taiwanese Beef Noodle soup because it reminds me of my hometown, filling, and just plain tasty anytime of the year!
It’s tough to pick a single favorite dish. I love all Asian food! But if I had to, I would say Ramen is my favorite dish. I could probably eat a bowl daily.
My favorite Asian dish is any noodle dish, especially noodle soup dish. I love it in the winter. In fact, I may even say that I like the broth of noodle soup more than I like the noodle!
Soup dumplings are the best.
I would say my favorite Asian dish is lean pork with bamboo shoots with rice.
I can’t pick just one dish! I looove everything from Pho to Lo Mein to mongolian beef and and everything in between. Asian food is probably my favorite kind of food. Yummy!
fishball noodle soup. The fishballs have to be made by hand using fresh fish, and then dropped into a pot of hard boiling ikan-bilis stock upon ordering. topped with some fried onion slivers and crisp sliced green onions, it’s heaven in a bowl. really precious.
Cucumber Namul (there’s something similar I have made for a Chinese cookbook as well but don’t know the name). I love it because it’s spicy and super easy to make.
Dumplings of all kinds, of course. Chawanmushi with special treats hidden in.
My own home made Peking Duck pancakes for wrapping almost anything. These pancakes are among the first Asian special ingredient I learned to make. (Joyce Chen recipe).
My favorite is gyoza. I grew up helping my mom fold the gyoza skins – painstaking but worth the effort!
dumplings: love the skin on the outside and so many varieties… shanghai siu loan baos, kimchee, curry, shrimp, pork, leek, etc!
My favorite is Lo mei gai….savory sticky rice stuffed inside a deboned chicken and then deep fried. I think it’s also known as eight treasure chicken. I love the different textures of the crispy skin and the soft sticky rice.
My mom’s homemade “healthy” spring rolls
I love noodles….lo mein, soup noodles, pho, chow fun….. yum!
There are too many favorites for me to lis, but my most memorable Asian dish would be the Vietnamese ‘Smashing Rice Paper’ dish. It consists of one freshly steamed rice paper, placing on top of a freshly toasted dry rice paper, and ‘smash’ together. The star of the dish is the dipping sauce, usually made with a pungent shrimp/fish sauce with lots of chili pepper and minced garlic. The dish is so simple, yet all the flavors come together in that one bite: the crunch from the toasted rice paper, the nuttiness from the sesame seeds roasted on the dry rice paper, the silkiness with a bit of chew from the steamed rice paper, the tingling sensation from the chili sauce; the piquantness of the sauce. They all blend together to create this exploding sensation.
And since this dish was probably the cheapest and most fulfilling snacks in Vietnam, I had a lot of them throughout my childhood, and it’s become the flavor of childhood for me.
I love lo mien noodles whether it is with meat or just vegetables bec. of the variety of ingredients and they taste so good and such a comforting food for me!
I just learned how to make steamed dumplings from scratch from a Chinese woman who lives here in the US. It was excellent. Love steamed buns at dim sum restaurants and now my house! The steamed bun dough is different from the potsticker dumplings because it has yeast and rises. We used about the same filling as you did! Then I learned you can cheat and use refrigerated biscuit dough and it tasted great that way too!
Yes! My mom totally uses the “Bisquick method” for making buns. I’ve made steamed buns to make pork belly buns too. Yummmm http://tinyurbankitchen.com/2010/08/traditional-pork-belly-buns-gua-bao.html
That sounds SOOO good! Gosh, can’t wait for the day when I can visit Vietnam!
Picking just one favorite Asian dish? Are you serious? There are so many I like! I guess I would have to go with soup dumplings. I make dumplings at home but have yet to master the soup dumpling. I love the fragrant broth, the delicate wrapper, and the meaty goodness all wrapped up inside.
I just discovered your blog and it’s great! I used to help my grandmother make those dumplings all the time! 🙂 So dumplings are of course one of my favorites. Another one is tigers head stew, then maybe jia jiang mein!
Duck lo mein. The best is from this little restaurant in the city I was born in, Hsin Chu, Taiwan.
My mother’s hot and sour soup
Lucky you! I went on a tour of Boston’s Chinatown food markets and restaurants with Nina Simmons many years ago, and I have some of her excellent cookbooks.
Deep fried chicken with scallion dipping sauce is a favorite!
Beef chow fun! We always order that when we go out to eat..the black bean gravy is my favorite!
NRM and XLB are very nostalgic dishes for me, but I love daikon cake when I’m out because it’s so labor intensive to make at home…
Japanese curry and rice. It’s so simple. it’s comfort food for me.
Chicken katsu curry rice! It’s such a great comfort food combo.