Happy Chinese New Year I

on 2024-02-07

Togetherness🔗

It is when I got the invitation from my friend Jenny to her early Chinese New Year party that I first realized the approach of the biggest and the most important holiday in China. Having been away from home for every single CNY ever since I came to the US (exactly 12 years, so last one at home was also dragon year), the significance of this holiday has boiled down to calling my parents and experiencing a brief moment of holiday vibe through them. Despite there are always events organized by friends or community, it doesn't carry the same meaning of being together with family.

Because of the party, I looked up for the date for this year and guess what? [Harold the Pain Smile inserted here] A happens to be in Australia during the entire two weeks of CNY (traditionally the celebration lasts two weeks that ends at the 15th day called Lantern Festival). Awww. A slight disappointment crossed my mind. After years of fading memory of the once biggest time of the year, it's after all just gonna be normal days for me anyway, I comforted myself. But the thought of being alone during a family gathering time still brings a tinge of sadness. To relieve A's apologizing look, I quipped "I'm never alone. Gragrag will keep me company". Later, my Mom decided to come over during the time A is away. It turns out I have family with me during CNY all the time just not all at the same time. Nonetheless, it feels so much more loved than just me and Gragrag. So the essence of CNY is family togetherness after all. That's what gives the celebration meaning.

Acknowledging A would miss the actual duration of CNY, I still want to bring the homey celebrative vibe to us when he's still here. We had a good time at Jenny's party with chillaxing conversation and traditional food. It also inspired my plan of early CNY celebration with A. Specifically, when we were trying out all the delicious dishes Jenny prepared, A mentioned his favorite is pork rib soup. It surprised me as you know he is not a soup person. Personally, all the dishes remind me of home and any one of them will be a good candidate for our CNY table. Since A has already announced his winner, I secretly decided to make my very first and hopefully very best pork rib soup. To accompany the soup, I decided on spring roll. It has made the list not only is it a must-have on CNY table with good blessing but also a winner of A in another occasion.

With all the plan weaving in my mind to surprise him, it suddenly dawned on me that holiday, CNY or otherwise, is nothing but an excuse to do something special for your loved ones. The meaning of the holiday is fulfilled if you put your mind to spend quality time with them. It doesn't matter how glamorous or traditional or timely the celebration is. All it matters is each other. The togetherness. Suddenly I no long feel sorry that we'd miss the actual CNY. We will just make the most of the week before. Being with each other. Making smell-like-home food together. Enjoying cozy time at home. And after that, he gets to see his family and me my Mom. Not bad at all.

Pork Rib Soup🔗

Pork rib soup is like Italian Sunday sauce. It takes a whole afternoon to stew but mostly hands-off. The yield is a giant pot (or two if you are as ambitious as me) that can be used throughout the week. It is especially popular in winter for its warming effect. Usually winter vegetables are used in the soup to add nuitrition and flavor. I used a variety of traditional Chinese soup vegetables mainly to introduce them to A as they are rare to find in American supermarket.

The biggest tip and key to success for this recipe is BLANCHING THE RIBS. It will remove impurities and make the soup clean yet full of flavor. Don't skip this for laziness. It's pretty quick and so worth it. Basically, all you need to do is

  1. put the ribs in a pot and fill in enough water to submerge them
  2. bring the pot to boil for 5 min
  3. rinse the ribs under cold water

The rest is super straightforward.

  1. dump everything in a pot
  2. bring the pot to boil
  3. reduce heat to simmer
  4. keep simmer for 3-4 hours or until ribs are fall-off-bone tender

You will be amazed by how much flavor those ingredients can bring without any additional seasoning other than very small amount of salt. Below is the list of aromatics and vegetables I used. You can definitely augment or swap based on your preference. But this is very good baseline.

Aromatics

  • ginger, a big knob, sliced
  • scallion, a bunch, segmented
  • goji berry, as much as you like

Vegetables

  • lotus root, 4 small
  • winter bamboo, 2 medium
  • daikon radish, 1 big
  • shiitake mushroom, 1 pint
daikon bamboo lotus

The above and 3.25lb of full rack rib yeilds two big pots of soup. Both done during the same 4hrs. So it's a very efficient large batch recipe that will keep you and your family warm for quite a while.
too many goodies for one pot pot1 pot2
Tada big pot (dubbed as mom pot) small pot (dubbed as me pot)

Why mom pot and me pot?

YY: We can start with small pot. And by the time my mom arrives, there will probably be some left in the big pot for her.

A: So it is me pot (pointing to the smaller pot) and mom pot (pointing to the bigger pot)

Isn't it the cutest and sweetest comment?

With all the goodies and soup base, you can have the most nourishing and warming noodle soup.

You can also have anytime side soup by using less noodle/goodies and more soup

Spring Roll🔗

Spring roll is such a classic not just for CNY but also everyday home cooking, as least in Shanghai, that it has the same symbolizing effect as madeleine to Proust. The memory of me sneaking on spring rolls while my Dad still frying the next batch before dinner is remote yet vivid. By the finger food nature and popular filling, no wonder it's a crowd pleaser and kid's favorite. Maybe that's why it's a constant on CNY table.

Compared to other classic dim sum, like dumpling, spring roll is much easier to make yourself. The filling is easy to prepare and the wrapping has almost no skill-cap. Overall, it's fool-proof even for first-timer. I was fairly confident before I started and now I feel even more so. The procedure is quick and straightforward that I've listed some good references below. Here I'd like to cover couple of afterthoughts from my first experience.

  1. Get the right key ingredients but also be creative on filling

Spring roll wrapper is square thin sheet of dough that's usually sold in freezer section. Though you can definitely make yourself but I highly recommend getting the premade from a reliable brand.

The most quintessential filling ingredients are napa cabbage, shiitake mushroom and pork. Napa cabbage provides the overall body, mushroom the umami flavor and pork, well, you gotta have some meat. That's being said napa cabbage is definitely the irreplacable main character as it defines the overall experience. Soft gooey cluster of cooked down cabbage dotted with mushroom and pork pieces brings you mainly light vegetable broth flavor enhanced with shroomy and porky taste. So don't swap napa cabbage with other kind of leafy vegetables. It won't be the same.

a good brand napa cabbage yellow oyster

However, what you can improvise is other filling ingredients. For example, I used yellow oyster instead shiitake, ground pork instead of pork slice, even additional corn/pea/carrot dices. They all work well with the base of cabbage.
classic filling creative filling
  1. Use corn starch to thicken the filling

With that high proportion of cabbage, it's not surprising that after stir-fry, it release a ton of juice. Don't leave the juice behind as it's the key flavor. Don't keep the juice as it is either as it ruins the wrapping. Instead, adding corn starch slurry until it thickens up that no visible juice remains.
thinly slice cabbage thickened filling
  1. A small tip in wrapping

Here is the general steps of how to wrap. Notice in step 4 after bringing two sides to center, I folded both sides a bit so they are converging to the top point instead of diverging. It will avoid two side pockets in the final product that may collect oil.

Too abstract to follow? no worries, it will all be very clear after rolling a couple of them. I invented this trick on the second batch as observing the first batch having side pockets and oil getting into the pockets issue.
without tucking in, pockets on the side with tucking in, much neater
  1. Deep or shallow fry?

As we all know, deep fry provides superior texture than shallow fry for almost everything, at the cost of more oil and more work. The question is does it worth it, or when to deep fry. Here's my report after trying both methods.

Deep fry creates all-around crunchy shell. Shallow fry creates more of crisp skin on the two sides that touch pan (You can maximize crispy skin by standing rolls on their sides but that's a quick tricky maneuver). However, if you reheat deep fried ones the next day using oven, crunchiness degrades due to moist filling seeping into shell. So the overall ranking is

same day deep fry > same day pan fry > next day deep fry

Deep fry

Shallow fry

What's the verdict?

If to celebrate special occasion like CNY, do a small batch of deep fry that you'd finish in one setting. For all other occasions, freeze the wrapped spring rolls and shallow fry in the pan. It's actually a very quick and tasty lunch option.
put wrapped rolls single layer in the tray stack trays to freeze store freezed ones in bag to save space

Final Words🔗

For CNY eve, it's just the two of us and a big plate of spring roll. With his favorite beer and my favorite drink, we ate as many until full, and finished with a bowl of soup. It may seem funny that usually spring roll is just an appetizer among so many other dishes on the table. Whereas we exclusively had it for the entire dinner. But it might have been my favorite CNY dinner. Not for the food, admittedly it's tasty homemade spring rolls, more for the vibe. It's the cozy homey feeling that brings the meaning for CNY.

References🔗

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