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Recent PostsLucky Chinese New Year DumplingsBathtub Gin RecipeEnter the Dragon: Fun Lunar New Year (Tet) Sweets, Cards & DecorAsian Tofu Update: First Review and Ebook NewsPan-Fried Cucumber with Red Perilla (Tia To) RecipePan-Seared Egg Tofu "Scallops" with Sweet Chile Sauce RecipeFarewell 2011, Hello Year of the Dragon!Chinese Pigs in Blanket RecipeDeviled Sriracha Crab Rangoon RecipeDad’s Other Holy Trinity: Tiger Balm, Eucalyptus Oil, and ToothpicksAwards + Praise
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« Asian Tofu Update: First Review and Ebook News |Main| Bathtub Gin Recipe »
January 09, 2012Enter the Dragon: Fun Lunar New Year (Tet) Sweets, Cards & DecorThe Lunar New Year is just around the corner. In fact, my mom -- for the first time ever -- asked me when Tet was. When I responded, "January 23, 2012," she about fell out of her chair.
"It's so fast this year," she said with a slight groan. Then she checked her calendar for when she should wrap and cook banh chung Tet sticky rice cakes. She priority mails them to my siblings and their children in college. (Seriously.)
As for me, I started thinking about what the Year of the Dragon may turn out to be. It's suppose to be a time to celebrate colorful, free spirits -- that is, law and rule breakers! My kind of people. Dragons are also known to be ambitious, flamboyant, and energetic. On the other hand, this upcoming new year is the year of the Water Dragon (Black Dragon according to Yun Ho, my friend in Korea). The water element means that the dragon will be calm and feminine. A sort of Puff the Magic Dragon is what I envision.
Lunar New Year is fun. Aside from what you can read into the zodiac animals, you must shop. I'm not talking about dropping a ton of dough, but rather, shopping at Asian markets and looking for holiday decorations -- stuff to cheer up the house and set things right for a new course once January 23 arrives. Splurging for small extravagances gets me in the Tet mood.
Lunar New Year Sweets
If you're game, head to an Asian market. You'll see displays of sweet treats. Most of them look inedible but they sport extraordinary colors (lots of food coloring) and are obligatory snacks for when guests visit to share New Year wishes.
I'm always drawn to candied coconut ribbons like the ones above. But I remind myself that they're rather tasteless. I go home to make my own mut dua. Since it's citrus season, I also find the most perfect navel oranges at the farmer's market for a batch of candied orange peels (see Into the Vietnamese Kitchen, pages 294 and 295 for sweetmeat recipes); the peels are nontraditional but Viet cooks tend to candy whatever fruits that are available to them. Candied lotus seeds are nice too, albeit a little tricky to make.
Even though these buttery Vietnamese mung bean cakes sometimes give me a little gas, I had to buy a box of banh dau xanh:
They're made by Bao Hien Rong Vang -- note the golden dragon on the logo -- a well-regarded Vietnamese bakery. You can find this northern Vietnamese specialty at Vietnamese bakeries abroad. They're great with tea. I typically cut one square into 4 melt-in-your-mouth morsels.
If you have Chinese doughy goodness on your mind, a batch of sinful Chinese peanut cookies (hua sheng bing) are a delicious New Year treat. If you're up to deep-frying, make Cantonese sesame balls (ma tuan/jin deui, see Asian Dumplings, page 201). Your family will praise you for many new years to come.
Year of the Dragon Cards
Lunar New Year is also about spreading good vibes. I used to make my own greeting cards but gave up after the last Year of the Rabbit. This time around I found great cards on Etsy.com I ordered them over the weekend and they arrived today from San Diego. Etsy had other options but this one had a hand-crafted, woodblockish look:
If you're like me and awful at sending out Christmas cards, Lunar New Year cards are a terrific workaround. No one will wonder why you're late.
Dust off Decorations
You have to gussy up the house for Lunar New Year. My husband and I rummage around in our closets for New Year decor -- for example, lanterns and Chinese character hangings that say "good luck" and "great fortune. " I also print out and display a Vietnamese Tet couplet on our door. For the Year of the Dragon, we dusted off this paper dragon from 12 years ago. Go to Cost Plus, Chinese markets, and Asian restaurant supply shops for knick knacks like this:
Then, I also realized that we'd brought this dragon platter back from Hoi An, Vietnam, in 2003.
Our friend Victor Fong had the amazing dragon at the top of this post at his house. After decorating it for Christmas, he took off the ornaments and used it for Chinese New Year.
The point is: Buy a few fun, tacky decorations but if you have Asian stuff around, there are likely dragons already in your home. Clean them up and display them in an extra prominent spot for January 23. Go ahead, you already paid for it.
Moving Forward
Keeping all of this in mind, let's have some fun and break a few rules. My husband and I are experimenting with making bathtub gin for a Lunar New Year cocktail. More on that as details develop.
Simon Bao suggested a meatless Tet celebration since the holiday falls on a Monday. Any takers or ideas? Buddhists are likely well versed in having meatless Lunar New Year!
In the mean time, ponder, shop, and get ready for the Year of the Dragon.
Related posts
Simple Ways to Celebrate Tet: Easy, no-sweat things to do for Tet, such as a downloadable Tet couplet for your door, pointers on how to wish people “Happy New Year” in Vietnamese, Cantonese and Mandarin, and how to attract good luck for the New Year (xong dat)How to find a Tet Festival: Tips for locating these events, which hare typically advertised only in the Vietnamese community!Traditional Tet Flowers and Blossoms: My father used to cut blooming branches from trees he found in the neighborhood. You can clip like him, or buy, like me. This post tells you what to look for. Learn about the flowers for the holiday.Food
Special Foods for Tet Celebrations: What is typically eaten during this holiday? Great for menu planning.Banh Chung and Banh Tet: What are they and how do you eat these sticky rice cakesPan-fried Tet Sticky Rice Cake Recipe (Banh Chung Chien)Chicken and Bamboo Shoot Noodle Soup Recipe (Bun Mang Ga)Download step-by-step photos of how to form and wrap banh chung Tet sticky rice cakes . The mold is my preferred method because it's much easier to get the square shape, a hallmark of the sticky rice cakes. The photos correspond to my detailed recipe for banh chung in Into the Vietnamese Kitchen (Ten Speed Press, 2006).Banh Chung Tet Sticky Rice Cake RecipeCandied Lotus Seeds Recipe Chinese peanut cookiesPosted | Permalink | | Comments
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Yeah! Last year me and my husband were married durring Lunar New Year... It was the most auspicious day of the year for us to marry. I am a water dog, and my husband a water ox, and we are hoping to add a water dragon to the family this year!
Posted by:Bonnie |January 09, 2012 at 11:57 PM
Andrea, I love serving cocktails at our Tet party that are full of the flavors of the fruits of Vietnam, but I've never before thought of a very specific Lunar New Year Cocktail.
Here's a thought though. Build the cocktail around one of the fruits most strongly associated with the holiday; one might simply choose a favorite. One can use canned juices or nectar of Soursop (Mang Cau, AKA guanabana, custard apple), or Papaya, Mango, Coconut, or Watermelon, etc. Mix that with the alcohol of your choice, consider whether it needs a citrusy punch from something like Cointreau, Grand Marnier, or Limoncello, garnish with some of the fresh fruit and a sprig of mint.
Once that's done, slap an appealing name on it, and it's ready to serve.
Our yearly Tet Party has a cocktail menu that features a Can Tho Cosmo, South China Sea Breeze, Stalinist Purge, Pass of Clouds, Dalat Daiquiri, Ho Chi Minh't, Ben Tre Coconut, Marble Mountain, Hammer & Sickle, Ban Gioc Falls, Trinh Lord, Enemy of the People, and a Sleepless in Saigon (Iced Viet coffee, Kahlua, & Baileys).
Posted by:Simon Bao |January 10, 2012 at 05:25 AMAndrea, the other task folks should undertake NOW in preparation for Tet is go order their flowers and arrangements.
I subscribe to the principle that the house should be as festive, colorful, and well-decorated for Tet as it is for Christmas. That requires the accordion dragons, ornamental strands of firecrackers, Tet-related artwork I've downloaded - I mean borrowed - from the Web, decorative arrangements of fruit, but it mostly means flowers.
Just as red and green are the color scheme of Christmas, red and yellow are the colors of Tet. Now is the time to order red and yellow carnations, giant pillowy chrysanthemums, red and yellow gladiolas or their red-yellow blended siblings, etc. For most of us, the ONLY hope of getting forsythia branches in bloom is to order them now, and even so it may be a long shot for this year.
And if one has a friendly and obliging neighborhood florist, don't hesitate to bring in a small dragon decoration (paper, wooden, or porcelain dragon, a small plate or cup with a dragon) and ask it be incorporated into a floral centerpiece.
All of one's lazy, morose, melancholy Vietnamese friends who didn't do a single thing to decorate their own homes will brighten when they see it. And then maybe they won't bore you to tears talking about how Tet in America isn't like Tet in Vietnam when they were little.
Posted by:Simon Bao |January 10, 2012 at 06:08 AMHey Andrea, are all the Tet Lunar New Year cards purple in color in general? Not red like Chinese New Year's? LOL. I actually kinda like the red obnoxious cards, really festive.
Posted by:Bee | Rasa Malaysia |January 10, 2012 at 09:55 AM
Andrea:
Thanks for bringing back my fond memories of Tet in Vietnam. As for the year of Black Dragon, it is supposed to happen once every 60 years. The marketing effort to promote this black dragon is as the best year for "fertility" is just incredible here in Korea..
Posted by:Yun Ho Rhee |January 10, 2012 at 11:55 PM
This is one of the good posts I can find, I thank you for taking your time and sharing your thoughts
Posted by:valentines flowers delivery |January 13, 2012 at 09:02 PM
so the three ladies who work in the pantry at the restaurant where i work always bust my balls for not bringing them the play money i see at the local viet stores at tet.
i allways bring them herbs , lemon grass , bananas , papayas , hot peppers , citrus , and other goodies from my garden , depending what i have planted that year.
the three ladies are sisters with mai being the ring leader. she's a rebel and actually brags about how she was was the bad girl back home smoking weed back in the day before it all went to hell and they had to come here to the louisiana gulf coast.
she was actually the last one to get here , after the first big exodus. she got here by the skin of her teeth by hook and crook. she takes it in stride but she dont take no crap.
they are some hard ass hard working women who wont let you become friends with them very easy.
we have this pantomime where i am there son or sometimes their son in law ( much to sister maria's chagrin) where i do there heavy lifting. it's usually some easy hauling chore of five pounds or less or going thirty yards to the produce walk in to get them some lettuce or citrus.
they like being in control and i have deep respect for the hell they went thru getting here and putting their kids in better places than we are.
im in my 50's and they are in their 60's
i guess i'm trying to get a heads up on how to bring them some tet play money and the proper way to present it.
i will allways be a gulf south white boy and they will allways be little girls from vietnam , but slowly we keep deepening our friendship over time.
i would just like to do this one thing right seeing how none of us are getting any younger.
thank you , rick in new orleans.
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