connections
Thursday, January 19th, 2012
Recipe: chinese sweet soup (tian tang)
Chinese new year is coming up this Monday, January 23 (2012). It will be the year of the Dragon, which makes me chuckle because my dad is a dragon and he likes to tell everyone that he’s a dragon. In my childhood years, he always told me that the dragon was the best. I would look at the Chinese zodiac place mat at Chinese restaurants and find my dad, my mom, my sister, my grandma, and me. I knew by heart what we were: dragon, snake, horse, rooster, and pig, respectively. In my mind I saw a cartoon family of these creatures sitting at the dinner table together – my family.
mandarin oranges, fragrant pears, pomegranate, and a red envelope (hong bao)
For several years now it has no longer become a question of whether or not to make traditional Chinese dishes to celebrate the lunar new year, but a necessity. It is the one holiday I take seriously. I largely ignore Christmas. I consider myself lucky to stay up for the western New Year. But Chinese New Year is the time when I spend several days gathering and preparing these special foods, all the while deep in thought thinking of loved ones both here and gone. Remembrance is an important part of the holiday and we honor those who have passed on with an extra place setting at the table. They are meant for your ancestors, but in my case I have one for my sister, Kris, and now one for Grandma.
eat peanuts (hua sheng) for luck (promotion)
I woke up the other morning and began jotting down the menu for this year. Potstickers, cellophane noodle soup, lucky ten ingredient vegetable (rui tsai), stir fried rice cakes, and soybean sprouts. Simple, right? I also had a strong desire to make tian tang, a sweet soup that my Grandma always had on the stove whenever we came to visit her in California. Why did I never ask her for a recipe when she was alive? I choked back the lump rising in my chest and gave my mom a call. Mom listed a ton of options as the soup is quite flexible, “If you can’t find lotus seeds, you can make it without them.” “No Mom, I want to make it the way Po po made it.” I knew she understood. I know she misses her too.
white fungus, rice cake, longan, lotus seeds, red dates, ginkgo nuts
closer inspection: (l to r, t to b) red dates, longan, lotus seeds, white fungus, rice cakes, ginkgo nuts
It’s a good thing I have a strong visual memory otherwise this illiterate Chinese girl would be screwed when shopping for Chinese ingredients. I had gone grocery shopping with Grandma countless times. She taught me to select the sweetest fruit, the freshest greens, the most tender shoots, the best quality noodles. Between my memory, my mom’s instructions, and Google, I was able to identify the ingredients I needed at the big Asian market in Broomfield (POM: Pacific Ocean Market). When I found the first one – the dried lotus seeds, I picked the bag up in my hand and examined them under my fingers through the plastic. And then I began to cry.
soak the lotus seeds, then simmer for an hour or longer until tender
soak the white fungus for ten minutes
**Jump for more butter**
