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Recipe: chinese egg dumplings (dan jiao)

I’ve spent the better part of the past week getting ready for Chinese New Year, so much so that I nearly forgot about my mammogram and ultrasound from mid-week. I’m not traumatized by these appointments. The medical center I go to has really wonderful staff and technicians. I sandwiched the medical imaging into my busy errands schedule that day. At the end, the techs always walk me to the front desk, shake my hand, give me a card explaining to expect my results in 10-14 days, and wish me good health. For that split moment I wonder about those results. It’s the difference between nothing and everything. And then I strode briskly out the doors, my brain in grocery-hunting mode.

making dumplings

Most of the food is prepped or cooked for the big feast on New Year’s Eve. The house is nearly clean because once the new year arrives, you can’t clean for 2 weeks lest you sweep the luck out. Speaking of luck, it’s tradition to hang the Chinese character for luck (fu) on your front door, upside down (dao). Dao is also a homonym for the verb “to arrive” – so you definitely want luck arriving at your door, at your house.

here’s what fu looks like right-side up

Jeremy and I reached a stopping point in the housework Saturday afternoon and took Kaweah for a walk before the snow storm arrived in the evening. It was ridiculously warm out – 45°F! It felt like spring except for the sun low in the sky. There were patches of bare ground dotting the snow… sad, but not uncommon. What horrified me were the puddles. Liquid water shouldn’t be making an appearance around here until May!

splashy splash!

kaweah is an all-terrain kinda girl

Kaweah had a blast sniffing every.darn.thing.on.the.ground. Back home, a message waited in my in-box from my health care provider. Strange. I wasn’t expecting anything. It was a note from my oncologist that my scans were clean. I grinned. That was only four days ago. And my oncologist is working on a weekend AGAIN (of course – he is amazing). It’s been over four years since my first mammogram did NOT detect my cancer, so I take these negative scans for what they’re worth. I trust my yearly MRIs more. Even so, it’s a really nice way to start the new year.

Every Chinese New Year’s Eve we enjoy a big pot of cellophane noodle soup, a type of hot pot (huo guo) that is different from the more common Chinese hot pot. I make the cellophane noodle soup several times a year, but Chinese New Year’s Eve is the only time I go to the effort of making egg dumplings (dan jiao) to add to the soup. They represent wealth (any dumpling represents wealth).

the filling: ground pork, green onions, black mushrooms, bamboo shoots, ginger, napa cabbage

mincing the ginger

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Recipe: matcha green tea shortbread cookies

Someone has been doing their snow dances, because we are finally seeing a little winter love over here. Last week it snowed a nice half-foot at the local hill. I knew it was going to snow. You see, every time Kat comes to visit Boulder from Colorado Springs, it snows!

of course, the winds were not far behind

It mostly cleared up by the time Kat arrived for lunch the next day. We are huge fans of The Pinyon, but when they announced the start of lunch service in the new year we promised one another that this would be our next get together. I mean, a favorite resto that serves my favorite meal of the day? Booyah! We met up with two other fascinating and uniquely wonderful friends: Butter (how can you not love a girl who goes by the name Butter?) and Michael.

we all shared the fried brussels sprouts leaves salad, which was *amazeballs*

my shrimp po’ boy

Jeremy returned from travel and we spent the weekend driving to and from IKEA, disassembling and reassembling the house, working, and waiting for more snow. It was warm, windy, and not snowing.

while we waited: dramatic cloud formations at sunset

a little pink afterglow

But it did start snowing this morning on our backcountry ski and it continued to snow all day, dropping a few inches in the neighborhood and more in the mountains. Our winter weather pattern in the Colorado mountains is mostly like this: if it isn’t snowing, it’s sunny. Sometimes it’s both snowing AND sunny. Usually when it snows, it tends to be overcast and cold. That’s how we like it. Jeremy invariably makes himself a hot cup of coffee or tea when he comes inside from the cold, and if there is a sweet nibble of cookie, cake, or pastry to be had, his day is pretty much golden. I figured, if one likes tea and cookies, surely one would like tea in cookies!

flour, butter, sugar, confectioner’s sugar, egg yolks, matcha green tea powder

mix the matcha and confectioner’s sugar together

I’ve had this recipe on my “to try” list for years. I don’t know why it was buried for so long. I love matcha green tea anything because it’s such an easy and lovely “Asian” ingredient to incorporate into so many western desserts. And because this is a shortbread, I knew it would be reliable to bake at altitude with essentially no need for adjustments. You have no idea how much I love that.

beat the matcha, confectioner’s sugar, and butter until smooth

mix in the flour

add the yolks

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Recipe: fried stuffed olives

On rare occasion Kaweah gets weird and needy at night and this is one of those nights. She’s demanding my attention right now (pawing at me, resting her chin on my lap, shoving her nose under my forearm so I can’t type). This happens whenever one of us is on travel. Jeremy used to think it only happened when I was away because I’m her alpha, but it’s clear that she doesn’t like it when Jeremy is on travel either. This post will have to be quick.

I tried a recipe on Tuesday and liked it so much that I had it jump the queue to share with you. The first time I had this dish was last April in Seattle at Black Bottle. Fried olives with remoulade sauce. Salty? Check! Crunchy? Check! Bite-size? Check! It’s kinda like olive-katsu, but not really.

pitted spanish olives, goat cheese, eggs, flour, panko crumbs, parmesan

Make the remoulade sauce first because it requires a few hours of mellowing out in the refrigerator which is plenty of time to prepare the olives. The remoulade involves gathering a bunch of ingredients:

creole seasoning, mayo, pickle juice, horseradish, paprika, tabasco, garlic, mustard

mashing up a clove of garlic

placing all of the remoulade ingredients in a bowl

and stirring it together

pretty color

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