Chinese New Year Dumplings

Gong Xi Fa Cai!
Happy Chinese New Year!

When I was a kid, my mother always made a Chinese New Year feast with all the "lucky" foods and my favorite was always dumplings. She'd hide a peanut, candy, or a quarter in a select number of the dumplings (yes, we'd bleach the quarter and then wrap it in saran wrap - which was always my job) and a select lucky few would eat these special dumplings. Whoever got a peanut would be blessed with good health, the candy symbolized love, and the money meant fortune. It was a fun tradition that I definitely intend to continue with our kids!

Ingredients:
- Ground meat (I used a combo of ground pork and turkey. Shrimp is also a common filling)
- Vegetables (I used napa cabbage, but garlic chives, spinach, mushrooms, etc are all great options)
- Aromatics (Ginger, garlic, scallions, etc)
- Soy sauce
- Salt
- White pepper
- Sesame oil
- Dumpling wrappers

Directions:
- Finely chop the napa cabbage, salt it and set it in a colander to get rid of the excess water. Once it's been wilted, rinse off the salt and drain it. You can also put it into the food processor and then use a cheese cloth to squeeze out the water.

- Finely dice or grate the aromatics.
- Mix the meat, veggies, aromatics, and seasonings together in large bowl.
- Take a dumpling wrapper, place about a tablespoon of filling in the center along with one of the little surprises if you want. If you're having trouble getting it closed, use less filling or more if you want plumper dumplings. You'll get better at folding them with practice.
- Wet one half of the edge of the wrapper with water, fold over to close it and if you can, pleat the edges like this.

- Repeat the previous step until you run out of filling or wrappers. At this point, you can freeze them to cook at a later time or cook them now.

- To cook, you can use one of the following methods:

• Boil - Bring a pot of water to a boil. Carefully drop in the dumplings and give it a stir to keep them from sticking (there's no need to defrost them if they were frozen first) Bring it back up to a boil. When it reaches a boil, add a cup of cold water and bring it up to a boil again. Repeat this again. The third time it comes up to a boil, the dumplings should be floating and cooked through.
• Steam - Line a steamer basket with napa cabbage leaves. Put the dumplings into the steamer and steam for 10-15 minutes.
  
• Pot stickers - Pour enough oil to coat the bottom of a non-stick pan. Line the dumplings in a single layer (my husband likes to make it pretty, while I just dump them in haphazardly). Add a cup of water and cover with the lid. Let it boil/steam until all the water is almost dry. Remove the lid and keep cooking until the bottoms are crispy. Flip them out of the pan.

- Serve with your favorite dipping sauce. Personally, I like black vinegar and soy. Enjoy and happy year of the tiger! Rawr :)

Chao Mi Fen

If you're Chinese, you call this mi-fen. If you're Filipino, you call this pancit. If you're Malaysian, you call this bihon. In America, they call it Rice Vermicelli. Regardless of what you call it, I call it yummy!

Asian foods have a lot of overlap. I had a friend in high school who was Korean, and we used to have arguments, along with a Filipino friend of mine, on whether something our moms made was Chinese, Filipino, Korean, Japanese, etc. And if she couldn't win the argument, she'd just throw her hands up in the air and declare "It's Mongolian! We all descended from Mongolia!" Whether or not that's true, I don't know (I suck at history), but it was her way of saying "If I can't win, no one can!" :)

I like that there's a lot of overlap in the types of food Asians make and I love how each culture puts their own little spin on the same dish. In fact, even within each culture, there are countless ways to make this dish. I learned this way from my mom, but I've never seen it made like this in a restaurant or anyone else's house, which makes me think that she made it up to get me to eat more carrots, but who knows. Regardless, it's what I grew up with and what I enjoy, so I continue on the tradition by making this way too.

I know it looks like a scary amount of carrots, but somehow, it just works. The carrots lend a sweetness to the dish that I really enjoy and it doesn't taste too carrot-y. Plus it gives the dish color and makes it pretty. It's also a great way to use up carrots that have been sitting in the fridge for waaay too long!

This is my submission to Presto Pasta Nights, a wonderful event created by Ruth of Once Upon a Feast, which is being hosted by Joanne of Eats Well with Others. Check out the roundup at the end of the week for more noodly goodness.

Ingredients:
- Half a bag of dried rice vermicelli
- 5 carrots
- Half a head of napa cabbage
- 2 to 3 chicken breasts or pork chops
- Soy sauce
- Oyster sauce

Directions:
- Soak the rice vermicelli in water while prepping the other ingredients. It should be soft and pliable by the time you need to use it, which should take about 10 minutes or so. Soaking it longer does no harm.
- Slice the chicken or pork into thin strips of about a quarter inch thick. If you want bigger pieces of meat, that's fine too, there are no real rules to this.
- Mix in a bit of soy sauce and corn starch with the chicken/pork to marinate and tenderize it.
- Peel and shred the carrots. I find the shredding blade of the food processor especially handy for this task.
- Wash and thinly slice the napa cabbage. You can use more or less if you'd like, or use regular cabbage or even other veggies such as spinach if you'd like too. There's a lotta flexibility here. My mom used napa cabbage, so that's what I use too.
- Heat a bit of oil in a large pot or wok.
- Put the marinated meat into the pot/wok and stir it until it's about 80% cooked through. You can add more soy or oil if it seems to be sticking to the pan too much.
- Add the carrots and cabbage and give everything a good stir. Sprinkle a bit of salt on top and put the lid on. Check on it every few minutes, giving it a stir if necessary, until the carrots and cabbage have wilted and softened significantly.
- Add the soaked noodles in and flavor with soy and oyster sauce to taste. Stir everything together until the noodles are soft. If the pan keeps drying out while you're stirring or the noodles are too hard, add more water.
- I love to serve this with Sriracha sauce.