Lunar New Year

Across Asia, dumplings symbolize good luck for the Lunar New Year. In preparation for this year’s celebration, I decided to learn how to make one of my favorite dumpling dishes, the Korean hobakjuk or pumpkin porridge with sweet rice dumplings. If you aren’t familiar with the Asian tradition of sweet soups and porridges, it might help to think of this as a pudding.

I adore fresh kumquats, but every time I bite into one I brace myself against the mouth-puckering intensity. Candied kumquats, on the other hand, are reliably sweet with an enjoyable nuance of bitter and tart. They’re versatile, too: nibble on them as candies alongside tea, spoon them over desserts or into cocktail glasses, or even serve them with savory meats and salads.

Chinese or Lunar New Year falls on this coming Monday, January 23rd. In honor of this very important holiday, Bee of the beautiful and delicious website Rasa Malaysia brings us a traditional recipe for hot and soothing soup. Welcome, Bee! A traditional Chinese New Year meal is incomplete without dumplings and a dish of nourishing and soothing Chinese soup, hence I’ve combined the best of both worlds into this pork dumpling soup.

Tết, or Lunar New Year, is just around the corner, and for many Vietnamese this means getting together with family, wrapping sticky rice cakes the same way their ancestors have been doing for thousands of years, and telling stories about the ancient King Hùng Vương. Legend has it that when the time came to choose his successor, King Hùng Vương asked each of his 18 sons to prepare a dish worthy of offering to the ancestors.

We recently ran a tour of Kenny Lao’s kitchen in the East Village. Kenny, who owns Rickshaw Dumpling Bar in New York, cooks a mean dumpling and I felt like I was in great hands for my tutorial.We worked together to write up a recipe — as Kenny says, dumplings are not an exact science — with the hope that you might give it a whirl. Wouldn’t tonight would be a good night for dumplings?

They do take a bit of work, although that can be cut down by using pre-made dumpling wraps. But it’s a relaxing sort of work – chopping, mixing, and wrapping. They smell wonderful, too; the aroma of ginger, scallions and sesame filled my kitchen and I could hardly wait for them to be done! Step-by-step pictures below… This was my first time making this sort of dumpling, as you can probably tell from my awkward wrapping.