Chinese New Year: Year of the Horse and Noodle Recipe

** My original article posted on patch.com a few years ago, but the links are presently broken. Imagine the horror when I thought all my articles were deleted! But, I got in touch with the engineers, and hopefully they will have it up and running in the near future. Until then, I’ve updated a few things.**

Chinese New Year: Year of the Horse and Misua Recipe

This Friday, January 31, marks Chinese New Year, 4712 by the Chinese calendar, which is also known as the Year of the Horse. It’s a special year in our house with my daughter, brother, father, father and mother-in-law all celebrating their year. To set the record straight, I am not Chinese by heritage, but my husband is, and almost everything I know about Chinese New Year, I’ve learned from him and his family.

Chinese New Year: Year of the Horse and Misua Recipe

On Chinese New Year’s Eve (and regular New Year’s Eve) we light a red candle

Chinese New Year is based on the date of the second New Moon after the Winter Solstice, so the date changes from year to year, but is usually sometime between late January to early February. Traditionally it is a fifteen-day celebration, so it is acceptable to celebrate anytime within two weeks of the beginning of the New Year.

On Chinese New Year’s Eve, we light a red tapered candle surrounded with coins… the candle symbolizes your parents’ lives, and coins for prosperity. Let the candle burn through the night for long life. (If you think I’m going to burn my house down, you won’t be the first one.)

My family typically has a wonderful brunch at my in-laws home to celebrate Chinese New Year, and sometimes, we wait until the weekend for more convenient scheduling. It’s not a particularly lavish brunch, but steeped in tradition and symbolism. And, we all wear red.

Chinese New Year: Year of the Horse and Misua Recipe

My husband and his mom making misua for New Year’s (2014)

Chinese New Year: Year of the Horse and Misua Recipe

Mom-in-law, hubby and me preparing misua (noodles) for New Year’s

The color red is used whether in clothing, tableware or dishes, and the color was believed to ward off evil spirits. The word for red in Mandarin also means “prosperous”, so lucky word, lucky color – lucky red! Round or circular shapes are found throughout the meal since circular shapes are considered to be good luck.

Chinese New Year: Year of the Horse and Misua Recipe

Red envelopes for Chinese New Year

Our kids will receive red envelopes (shown above, and first picture) from their grandparents and us, mom and dad. Again, it’s red symbolizing good luck, and to ward off evil spirits. The envelopes, ang pao (Fukinese) or hong bao (Mandarin), contain money – good fortune. Read on for the misua (noodle recipe)

Fruity Mooncakes

My in-laws received some delicious mid-autumn festival mooncakes from friends and shared them with us. If you aren’t familiar, these are delicious little Chinese pastries (you could even say, filled cookies) filled with red bean, lotus paste or maybe a hard-boiled duck egg. Ours are fruit-filled which bodes well for the kids.

The imprint on the cake is my favorite thing… I wonder if I can find some “stamps” from a Chinese bakery? Wouldn’t those be fun in a craft room display? And the box that the cakes came in, it’s so cute with a magnetic closure. We’re keeping that for something – maybe my craft supplies. Just when you thought there wasn’t anymore, you get plastic knife and tiny little forks that say, “OK”. You know, because waiting to eat the cakes until you get home from the bakery just won’t cut it.

Broccoli in Oyster Sauce

Back to the daily grind! My husband and I went away for a little “stay-cation” in the city. It was really nice not having a schedule, but we did miss our kids. I’ll be sharing some foodie moments from the weekend another time… haven’t downloaded the pics, yet.

When I was little, I actually liked vegetables. Maybe it was because my mom cooked them in and with delicious sauces or gravy which was really good with a bowlful of sticky white rice. My kids aren’t like that, and it’s a little disheartening that they don’t like veggies as much as I did at their age. I’m hoping they grow out of it, sooner than later. What is promising is that they enjoy vegetables if they are prepared Chinese-style or somehow Asian. Actually, when I feel the kids aren’t eating well at all, I pull out all the Chinese-Filipino recipes and they magically start eating again. Here’s my recipe for a nice side dish that the three-year old ate with rice. He passed up the chicken main course and ate only this.

  • 3 cups of broccoli – mostly florets
  • 1/4 c. water
  • 2 tbsp. oyster sauce (can get in most groceries)
  • 2 tbsp. soy sauce
  • dash cooking wine
  • 1-1/2 tsp. light brown sugar
  • 1 tsp. vegetable oil
  • 2 cloves garlic crushed
  • 1 tbsp. minced ginger
  • 1 tsp. cornstarch dissolved in 2 tsp. water
  • dash of sesame oil

Combine water, oyster sauce, soy sauce, cooking wine, sugar in small bowl. Mix well, set aside.

Prep the broccoli by blanching – fill pot with enough water to cover broccoli. Get water to boiling first, then place broccoli in pot, cook until bright green, about 1-2 minutes. Drain, rinse with cold water, set aside.

In a wok or pan, heat vegetable oil. Add garlic and ginger and toss until fragrant, but not brown. Next, add the sauce you mixed before, and heat.  Return broccoli to pan and mix in sauce well. Cook for one minute, then add cornstarch mixture to thicken. Add a splash of sesame oil at the end if you’d like, only optional. Stir around, and plate…

Making homemade potstickers

As a person living in an Asian household and cooking Asian food, there are some must-haves in the kitchen like a rice cooker with a steamer attachment, a hefty bag of short grain rice (in our case we have three different kinds), a wok, soy sauce, you get the picture. But egg roll wrappers or dumpling wrappers, we usually buy those from the Asian market. Until one day… we got the itch to roll out our own wrappers after watching Anita Lo (Top Chef Masters) make some. It’s only water, flour and salt. Oh, correction, HOT water. We used cornstarch to dust the rolling pins, surface and our hands.

Rolling homemade dough for potstickers

Abby thought it’d be fun to help. Thank goodness Ollie was napping. (Yeah, look at my man’s guns there.)

Not so perfectly round potsticker skins

Anita Lo makes it look so easy on television! I didn’t feel so bad, though, when Bobby Flay tried making some on one of his “Throwdown” shows (dumpling recipe here).

Raw potstickers

Note the “store bought” skins in the background. That was for insurance in case we totally botched up the recipe. As it was, it turned out pretty well. We have to work on our technique, but we did use the ready made skins for the extra meat filling we had leftover.

I’d share our filling recipe, except we don’t have one that’s completely documented or consistent, yet. Just know that we use ground pork, napa cabbage, sesame oil, salt and pepper. I’m sure I’ll update this with a proper recipe sooner or later.

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