use real butter

Recipe: red bean ice cream

Gong Xi Fa Tsai! Xin Nian Quai Le. Wung Shir Rui.

Happy Chinese New Year, everyone! Congratulations, good fortune to you, and may you receive all your heart desires. More than any other day of the year, on this day I feel so much good will toward people. Remembrance for the ancestors and loved ones who are no longer here with us. Love for the wonderful people in my life. Gratitude for this life. The big party is done and the house is clean. Our refrigerator is stocked to the hilt with leftovers. It’s a good day. I have every intention of making it a good year too. How about it?

celebrating the new year with friends

When I started celebrating the lunar new year on my own (in college) it was usually Chinese take out for dinner. Slowly, over the years, I learned to make the various dishes that my family typically celebrates with on the eve of the new year. It has grown on me. The longer I have been away from home, the stronger my ties to my culture and the cuisine (it’s almost ALL about the food, yo) have become. My parents, my grandma, my aunts – they all put on their own feasts. My sister used to call me on Chinese New Year’s Eve on her way home from work and ask what she could whip together for dinner because she wanted my nephew to learn the traditions of our family, our culture. Kris was not a cook like the rest of my family, but passing on this celebration to little Benjamin was important to her. I miss those calls.

These days, I try to make a point of sharing the feast with friends. The more people you have, the more dishes you can serve! Plus, I am often heard (loudly) bemoaning the utter lack of decent Chinese food in these parts of Colorado so much that Chinese New Year is the right time to step up to the plate and show people what I mean when I say real Chinese food. Each year I expand the repertoire by a recipe or two. Last night, while cooking for a dozen people, it became painfully clear to me why my parents have outdoors burners with enough BTUs to launch a rocket. Still, I think we all had a good time.

lucky ten ingredient vegetables (everything your heart desires)

my favorite bean sprouts (money)

Here’s what was on the menu:


shrimp toast
potstickers
cellophane noodle soup
lucky ten ingredient vegetable
stir fried soybean sprouts
sautéed chinese barbecue beef with chinese broccoli
kung pao chicken
steamed brown rice
lemon tart
chocolate mousse
green tea matcha ice cream
vanilla bean ice cream
coffee ice cream
red bean ice cream

chocolate mousse shots

kaweah snuggles up with nichole while everyone plays on the nintendo wii

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: profiteroles

Dear loyal readers, stalkers (yeah, I know who you are – don’t think I’m not stalking you right back!), and people who don’t know how they got here: I’m guest posting at Thursday Night Smackdown. I made profiteroles and there is even a Kaweah cameo. So hop on over and give Michelle some comment love because that’s how we roll!

behold the orbs of awesome

Recipe: lemon tart

Some bloggers actually post what they make that very day. I stopped doing that a long time ago because if I posted recipes I made in the same day then you would see two or three posts all crammed together and then a few weeks of nada. Did you think all of this was spontaneous rambling (okay, that part is mostly spontaneous), cooking, shooting, and posting? I’m not that inspired or patient. There is a lot of planning and organization that goes into this food blog otherwise I’d have thrown my computer across the room by now… several times. I feel better when I have a stash of a couple dozen recipes ready to go instead of one recipe that languished about because I didn’t really like it or the photographs were half-assed. I spent the week catching up on archives and so much other work. It was rather productive thanks to a lack of good snow, because I would have been tempted to rip it up on the slopes, fo’ shiz. I’ve even begun crazy cleaning around the house which I suppose might be Spring Cleaning two months early?

and that’s about all we got

actually, it’s pretty spankin’ cool to see up close!

There are times when I have to be in a mood to cook and shoot. Shooting a recipe for me doubles or even triples the amount of time it would take me to make it otherwise. That is just insanity. I think pastries are probably the most profanity-inducing recipes to shoot because you use your hands, they get really messy, and there’s this camera… I wash my hands so much while I’m shooting process steps that the backs feel like sandpaper. So you can imagine how wonderful it is after all of that trouble when you take a bite of the final product and it is fan-freaking-tastic.

meyer lemons

yes, butter in the pastry dough

I’m a fruity person more than a chocolaty person which means I will choose fruit over chocolate most of the time. Fruit makes me feel refreshed and happy. Chocolate makes me feel tired and heavy. But most people I know would pick chocolate over fruit. Maybe they’d change their mind if they tried this lemon tart?

cutting the butter into the flour

ready to chill

**Jump for more butter**