Happy Chinese New Year!

MENU:

Appetizers -- fresh cut vegetables with peanut sauce. My mother ("Laolao") will be providing the dip, because her's is SO GOOD.

Dumplings -- everyone in the family participates in making the dumplings. In past postings, I have deprecated myself and my dumplings, but I'll tell you now, they are damn good! Reference "Joy of Cooking" for a recipe.

Noodles -- signifying long life. In China some people celebrate individual birthdays during the year, and some don't. On Chinese New Year, it's everyone's birthday. This year's noodles will be pan-fried or oven-roasted vegetarian lo mein noodles.

Mr. Chang's Chicken -- this recipe was gathered by Ruth Reichl the first time she visited China. The chicken is boiled in a broth of soy sauce, sugar, star anise, ginger, licorice root, and mandarin orange peel.

Bok Choy -- a nutritious vegetable symbolizing the coming of spring. Simmered in ginger broth, and served with oyster sauce.

Tea Eggs -- hard-boiled eggs soaked in tea, star anise, and soy sauce. Symbolizing rebirth and new things to come, tea eggs are eaten first in the feast. These always seem weird to the uninitiated, but everybody likes them. You should try them. Here is the recipe:

TEA EGGS -- A specialty for Chinese New Year

12 eggs, hard boiled
1 cup soy sauce
4 t salt
12 star anise pods
12 black tea bags

Gently crack the shells of the eggs all over by tapping them with the back of a spoon but do not remove the shells. Put them in a large nonreactive saucepan with the soy sauce, salt, star anise, and enough water to just cover the eggs, about 8 cups. Tie the tea bags together and place them in the pan with the eggs.

Bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce the heat and simmer gently, covered, about 12 minutes. Turn off the heat and set the pan aside. Let cool to room temperature, covered. Refrigerate the eggs overnight in their cooking mixture before serving.

From: Modern Asian Flavors, A Taste of Shanghai, by Richard Wong, 2005.

Dessert? Well, those close to me know that I don't do dessert. But I will be serving the most fantastic dessert ever invented, in my opinion. I discovered it at CostCo.

I could live on noodles and sorbet.

Celebrity Chef David Chang

Very rarely is there a male celebrity who makes me swoon like a teenager. Some of my past loves have been: Fred Astaire, Rod Stewart, and Leonardo DiCaprio. Also Vince D'Onofrio, in certain roles. I hesitate to write about my new smittenly love, David Chang. My younger self would've probably become his groupie and followed him around begging him to love me, even though he was a total asshole. I am now old enough to know better. (Plus, he is much younger than I, so it's just weird to be thinking of him that way. I'm more comfortable having carnal thoughts about Patrick Stewart.)

If the way to a man's heart is through his stomach, the way to MY heart is through noodle. I fell in love with David Chang because his passion in life was noodles. He sought out noodles in Japan, as many people do, with a singular passion. I admire this quest in ways I cannot express, because it is a thing deep inside my soul. I know it's goofy, and it sounds pretty stupid coming from a Midwest farmer's granddaughter, but David Chang's story appeals to me on many levels. Three of the levels are 1) obsession with noodles, 2) aimlessly trying to figure out what to do in life, and 3) travel based mostly on eating cultural delicacies.

I had vaguely encountered Momofuku by surfing the 'net about food. It was when I was armed with a gift card at Barnes & Noble that I saw the book, "Momofuku," and had the means to buy it. It is part memoir, part cookbook, part photography, and part comical. I so admired the book that I stayed with a cashier for at least 15 minutes while he tried to take the smudge off the cover, couldn't, and then called other stores to see if they had a pristine copy, which I then drove all the way across town, from St. Louis Park to St. Paul, to buy. It's sounds silly, I know, but it is so neat to find a restauranteur and food lover who cares about simple noodles. During that 15 minutes, I watched a woman lose her misbehaved child, helped her look for him, witnessed some near-abuse followed by gift-buying for said child, and saw a homeless guy kicked out of the store. Good times! Just being-in-waiting has its rewards. Cultural entertainment is all around you.

Back to Momofuku. You have to read the story to know where the name comes from. The short version is that it's the name of the guy who invented packaged ramen noodles. What a cool legacy that is! Anyway, crazy David Chang, who has few friends willing to go into business with him, opened a noodle bar in NY, called "Noodle Bar," which was quite close to failing, and now he has at least 5 restaurants that are beloved darlings of New Yorkers. He is famous. He was on the David Letterman show. And he's super-cute (you know, in a younger-brother sort of way). One of my favorite stories from the book is how he describes his marketing plan for Noodle Bar: he brought lots of money to a strip club full of Japanese female strippers, paid for lap dances and gave them his Noodle Bar business card, figuring that if he filled his restaurant with hot Japanese women, the clientele would follow. Hee-hee! Sexploitation aside, that's genius, you have to admit.

What impresses me so much about Momofuku is the simplicity of the menus. Noodle Bar opened with a few versions of noodles and pickled vegetables. Beverages were severely limited. Exchange was cash only. I think that restaurants often have WAY too many things on the menu. In other cases, too few (Craftsman, take note). When I go to a restaurant it is an event, and I want to know, at least in part, what I'm about to put into my mouth. I don't want oodles of flourishing descriptions to read about the main course; I rely on my waitron to clue me in on the details. When I read one of those descriptions, I ask the waitron, "So, what does it TASTE like?" Hello! Please don't go on and on and on about tarragon-infused blah blah blah... you know? Speaking of blah blah blah... there I go again off on a tangent.

Now David Chang is rich & famous, and his restaurants are hard to get into. Oh, well. Here is a recipe from the book, which is so simple and so enlightened.

BUTTERMILK DRESSING
makes 1/2 cup

Whisk together:

1/2 cup buttermilk
2 1/2 T sour cream
scant 1/2 t kosher salt, or more if needed
generous 1/4 t sriracha (rooster sauce), or more if needed

In the book, this is served with raw fluke, soy & poppy seeds. When he invented the dressing, he and his staff ate it on leftover baked potatoes. That is pretty darn good. WAY better than ranch dressing on potatoes.

In the coming months of darkness, I will be adding sunshine to my world by cooking from the inspiration of David Chang. Look for more neat ideas. Also, Chinese New Year is coming on February 3rd, and I will be creating another fabulous feast that will include egg rolls, which I just made all by myself. And they are way better than what you can get in a restaurant. Also a future post about paladares.

Noodle!

This morning as I was brushing my teeth, I was reminiscing that before Ariel spoke English, she would mimic noises to perfection, including the electric toothbrush. She has perfect pitch. A very reputable source told me that 95% of Asians have perfect pitch, compared with about 9% of Westerners. Can you say tonal language?

Not much of a segue here, but have I told you that Ariel's first English word was "noodle!"?

I am obsessed with noodles, so when I found out that was her favorite food, I swooned. Oh, yes, we will stay home all day eating noodles! My life will be perfect. And we, did in fact, stay home a lot, eating all day. It wasn't as romantic as I pictured it. My fantasy neglected to include cleaning the kitchen.

Her love for noodles has since been replaced by a variety of foodstuffs. But my obsession remains. The newest book I bought is Takashi's Noodles, a complex compilation of recipes, many of which seem to resemble fusion cooking, though poring through it again and again, I have yet to figure out Takashi's genius. It's like there's a ghost in the book that is trying to talk to me, but I'm not getting the signals. For example, "Corned Beef with Rice Noodles." ???

One problem is the ingredients. In the Japanese recipes, exotic fresh mushrooms and particular seaweeds are required. Also, things like Japanese mountain yam, and quail eggs. Even though I can get them, I don't know how to really use them, and they taste funny to my Western palate (and just forget about trying to sell this stuff to my family). I want to say it's earthy, but really it tastes quite like dirt and seaweed. I like a seaweed broth, but seaweed... well, let's just say, it's really good for you!

I bought the book on the recommendation of one of my favorite bloggers, and I really want to master yaki udon. Takashi's recipe has 18 ingredients, including finely sliced lotus root. A lot of ingredients I can get in a can, but compared to fresh, canned vegetables have a profound effect on the flavor of finely crafted Japanese food.

That, my friends, is why we go to restaurants. Let's all take a moment to be thankful for all the chefs who feed us better food than we can cook at home.

[insert moment]

Nevertheless, I have found several new ways to use ramen noodles, and I will tell you a secret. I have tasted many imported brands of ramen noodles, and Top Ramen kicks it for only 33 cents, or 10/$1 on sale. They are the best. But you don't have to use the MSG sugar packet for flavor. For a more fresh tasting instant (practically) meal, try minced garlic, sesame oil, hoisin sauce, soy sauce, miso, sugar, and a few fresh green veggies like peas, cabbage, or bok choy.

My current favorite curry is on page 99 of Takashi's Noodles. I use half the amount of chicken stock, and twice the coconut milk, because I only use the cream off the top of the can, and discard the water (don't shake the can before opening). Bamboo shoots come in a can, and are a great addition to any curry. Curry, I think, is pretty darn good wherever you get it, homemade or otherwise. It's even good from a package. I like cooking, so I make my own, and these days, DH likes making it too.

Soba noodles are featured prominently in the book, and I love them. They are delicious just with soy sauce and pickled ginger. Peanut sauce works well too, but instead of pouring sauce on these buckwheat noodles, which tend to get gloppy (you know how I hate gloppy Asian food!), use chopsticks to dip noodles into a small bowl of thin peanut sauce.

Lastly, I will leave you with something to ponder:

"Soba Gnocchi with Scallops and Celery Root Foam." (page 49)