Celebrating the Year of the Horse–Recipes From My Mother

As you know, the Year of the Snake officially ended on Thursday January 30, followed by the Year of the Horse.  Each zodiac sign comes every 12 years and the horse is the zodiac sign for those born in 1966 or every 12 years before or after.  The lunar new year is celebrated by Chinese, Vietnamese and Koreans.  There are certain traditions we follow during the new year’s day and a big part of it involves a lot of cooking and eating! In the Vietnamese culture, the preparation and cooking starts several days before “New Year’s Eve” and is followed by four days of praying and offerings to the ancestors with multiple dishes at dinner time.  The foods can’t be leftover from the day before and should be, if possible (but you have to try really hard to make it possible), very elaborate.  Certain foods such as sticky rice cakes and stewed pork and eggs are the “must have” items, as they carry certain meanings.  Sticky cakes in rectangular shapes, I believe, signify the earth, while sticky rice in a cylinder which would be cut into circular slices, stands for the sky.

I have grown up in America since my mid teen years and have naturally become “Americanized.”  It is no longer practical for me to follow all these strict traditions.  When I lived with my mother during my years in residency, I ate very well during every Lunar new year, with my mom doing all the cooking and I just had to burn the incense and pray to the ancestors, inviting them to join us for a “simple” meal, as my mom called it.  A “simple” meal?  I used to laugh quietly as I heard my mom’s prayer.  I understood we were not supposed to brag about our cooking and preparation of these difficult dishes to our ancestors.  Modesty is a virtue in the Asian culture, but a “simple” meal with several appetizers and at least three main courses each day for four days in a row?  That did not even include an elegant fruit display at midnight on new year’s eve, when my mom would set up a table outdoors with a tray full of fruits including papaya symbolizing “having enough,” pineapple symbolizing “perfume” or “good scent,” coconut symbolizing “not too much.”  There is modesty with the hidden message “Please bring us prosperity.”   The incense would be lit at midnight as my mom stood and prayed seriously to her ancestors. Over the last two new years, I still had the fruits out at midnight, with the tray on my deck,and my mom was among those I now prayed to. 

Even as a child, I learned the lesson of not asking too much from your ancestors so that you didn’t appear greedy.  Your ancestors were supposed to be in this powerful spiritual world and could help bring you prosperity.  I always thought it was so ironic though, that whenever you, as a child, would greet an adult on the first day of the year, the most popular and important greeting would be:

“I wish you a new year full of good health and prosperity”

Notice, when you pray to your ancestors, you are supposed to say “not too much money and prosperity, just enough…”  You have to show your modesty and keep your greedy thoughts to yourself.

Without my mother, most of my new year’s eves have become more simple.  The dishes are ordered from local restaurants and this year, with my busy schedule, there were only three dishes on the table of offerings and none of the” must have” food was on the table.  My husband prepared a delicious beef roast in red wine and he was so liberal with the wine, I wasn’t sure if the Asian ancestors would have tolerated it.  I jokingly told my husband they probably got drunk on his dish and lost their way back to heaven!  I didn’t personally cook anything until the gathering of my family on the second day of this Year of the Horse.  Unlike many of my Vietnamese friends, however, I refuse to abandon the tradition of making offerings to our “ancestors.”  It is not a superstition, I explained to my friends, it is a tradition.  A man without tradition is one without a past.  Tradition and religion, I also believe, are two different entities.  I modified the traditions somewhat by performing these offerings only on new year’s eve and new year’s day, instead of four days as a traditional Vietnamese family would do.  To forget the tradition all together, however, would be the same as losing a part of my identity.

I decided to make two of my mother’s “signature” dishes, Chicken Curry and Vietnamese Chicken Soup for my family gathering.  It has been almost two years since my mother’s passing and this was the first time I made her famous Chicken Curry dish!  I looked at her recipes a few times over the last two years but had to quickly put them back into the recipe file.  Just looking at them made me miss my mother so much it was hard to think that I would be able to stare at the recipe for a few hours while making the dish.  I was not ready to bring my mother’s curry back into life until now.

The day of my family gathering, I couldn’t find the original recipe of the Chicken Curry in Vietnamese in my mom’s handwriting.  I was so upset and saddened as I was planning to even have it “laminated” as a small souvenir from my mom’s cooking days with me.  My husband, however, pulled out the translated version of this recipe.  I remembered reading my mom’s recipe in Vietnamese and did my best to describe it to David who then wrote it down the way we understood it.  We decided to make the best out of David’s version of the Chicken Curry.   Except for a few small things, such as “a heaping” of red curry paste, I found the recipe very easy and practical to follow.  “A heaping”?  Even David’s college nephew Benjamin couldn’t quite explain to me how much I should add into the pot as a “heaping.”

I also didn’t have one of the ingredients asked for in the recipe, galangal root powder.  What’s galangal?  I asked myself.  I decided to call my friend Dr. Rajagapol, an oncologist and marvelous chef who confirmed it was not the same as turmeric but reassured me that it tasted like ginger and my dish would not be a disaster without this ingredient.  I decided not to have to make a long drive to an Asian store for galangal root powder.  Instead, I added more ginger.  It turned out that Dr. Rajagapol was right in telling me that galangal is a “hard” ginger.  It is indeed in the ginger family and the taste is stronger.  Galangal root originated from Indonesia where it has a medicinal use.  It is a “hard” ginger since it is not easy to slice galangal.

My father was circulating around the kitchen looking at the pot of curry, giving his usual “side line” comments.  Being a fabulous cook himself, he often acts like a “Back seat” chef in our kitchen.

“ It doesn’t look like your mom’s curry.  Hers was red.  Yours is too yellow.  Did you add Tomato paste into the broth yet?”

Tomato paste? The recipe didn’t ask for tomato paste.  Did she forget to include the tomato paste, or did David forget to add this item when I was translating for him?  Instead of the “Red” curry paste as in the recipe, I used “Madras” curry paste and it could explain why the broth was yellow.  I started worrying about this dish being a flop for our new year’s day gathering.

At dinner, however, after several hours of leaving the curry pot on low heat, the broth had become thickened and had a reddish tinge to it, probably from the extra red pepper flakes I added to make the broth more spicy.  My mother’s curry was famous for being fiery hot.

My family loved my first curry pot!  It was a wild success.   Even with so much of other food, the big pot of curry was almost gone by the end of the evening.   My brothers requested the leftovers.  They declared my curry was “just like mom’s.” 

The Vietnamese chicken soup was also a big hit.  Each of my brothers brought home a small container of leftover soup.  We talked about how our mother used to make it with a lot of ginger and scallions.  We ate the sticky rice cake and egg rolls and reminded each other how these items were bought from mom’s favorite Vietnamese eateries in Eden Center, the hub of the Vietnamese cuisine in Falls Church, Northern Virginia.   

After dinner, I took my laptop and downloaded some Chinese songs for my brothers to listen to.  While searching on line for the NPR blog on the resurrection of Shanghai jazz, a fascinating documentary I half-way heard on NPR on the way home several days before, I tumbled upon the Chinese music of the 1970s.   Teresa Teng, a very famous Chinese singer then, sang many memorable songs for the Chinese movies with Vietnamese subtitles.  My mother used to take us to a movie theater in Saigon where the Chinese corny teenager love stories were played.  The melody of those songs, which became my mom’s favorite music, were carved into our memory.  Without translation, I no longer understood what those songs meant, but eating my mom’s favorite dishes and playing her favorite music brought back memories of our childhood Lunar new years in Vietnam. 

I am glad I have “resurrected “ my mother’s famous curry dish.  I think her curry dish is unique as it is almost a cross between the South Asian and Thai curry!  I plan to make it many more times, while playing Teresa Teng’s songs.  I discovered on the internet how Teresa died in 1995 at 42.  Like my mom, she is no longer here.  Her voice, however, is still cherished by even the younger generations.  Like my mother’s curry recipe, Teresa passed on her voice for, hopefully, years to come.  My mom was very much with us throughout this new year gathering.

Below is the translated version of my mother’s chicken curry dish and Vietnamese Chicken soup.  You can easily find the “exotic” ingredients such galangal roots or Curry paste and powder in any Asian market.  There is usually an aisle for South Asian and Southeast Asian cuisine ingredients.  The dish does not require much attention except when frying the meat.  The marinated meat can be left overnight as in the recipe or several hours as in my dish. Keep in mind how healthy the ingredients that make up curry powder or paste.  If you need a review of what cumin and turmeric can do for your health, go back to one of Marsha’s first blogs when she visited the spice market in Istanbul, Turkey last year.

The chicken soup is very easy to make but so delicious for a winter day.  Be flexible with ginger and scallions.  I happen to love ginger and believe it is such a healthy spice.  Ginger, for example, has become one of the effective treatments for nausea and vomiting during pregnancy.  This soup is well loved by our American friends and families and you will get many requests to make it whenever you have a party.  I made a pot for my bootcamp friends this morning and it was gone very quickly. If you don’t want to put the chicken back into the rice soup, you can separate the meat and make a chicken cabbage salad to go with the soup, as is done in Vietnamese restaurants.   

I hope you will enjoy both dishes and have a glimpse into my family’s gathering

MA’S Chicken Curry Recipe

 Ingredients:

3-4 Lb chicken, cut into 4-5 inches pieces 

-Take 5 large or 10 small garlic cloves chopped, one large white onion chopped fine, and about 3 inches of fresh ginger chopped fine and grind them together in a blender.  If you don’t have a blender, just make sure you chop everything real fine!

-One small onion, sliced and set aside

– Mix the spices together with 1 Tbs red pepper flakes, 1 Tbs salt, 2 Tbs sugar, 3 Tbs curry powder, 1 Tbs galangal root powder, 3 heaping Tbs red curry paste and 20-30 curry leaves.  Mix this mixture well with the chicken pieces and refrigerate for several hours ( My mom used to marinate them overnight but Vietnamese cookbooks tend to ask for only a few hours).  If you can’t find galangal root, just replace it with more ginger!

-Clean and cut 10-12 large red potatoes into quarters

-12 oz Half and half or a 12 oz can of Coconut milk

-Lime wedges for garnish or dipping meat

 Directions: 

Put 2 Tbs oil in a large skillet, heat on high for about 5 minutes 

Decrease the heat to medium, add the chicken and, stirring regularly, cook for about 10 minutes or until brown.

When the mixture has a little natural liquid in the skillet, cover and cook, stirring every so often, until the liquid has thickened a little. 

Add about 2 cups of water to the skillet and after 5 minutes, take the chicken piece by piece and transfer it to the pot with the potatoes while letting the juice in the skillet condense before adding it too to the pot 

Cook the chicken on medium heat and add the half & half making sure the heat is not too high.  Instead of half and half, you can use coconut milk

Cover the pot and decrease the heat to medium low and cook for about 30 minutes ( or until the potatoes are tender and done), then add sliced onion and turn off the heat

When serving, my mom used to have a plate of lime wedges and a dish with salt mixed with crushed fresh hot pepper for those who want to dip their chicken pieces to have an even more spicy taste

This dish is great with rice or French bread!  The leftover is even more tasty the day after, as the spices settle into the sauce

VIETNAMESE CHICKEN SOUP: 

Ingredients: 

3 lbs whole chicken

6 inches of fresh ginger (or more, if you like ginger), sliced and cut into julienne style

2 medium onions, sliced.

1 bundle of scallions, sliced into 1/4 inches

One cup of uncooked rice *

18 cups water** (or chicken broth, if you do not want to use whole chicken for this dish!)

One Tbs fish sauce (optional, can replace by salt, although fish sauce makes the soup more tasty)

One Tbs salt

One Tbs black pepper ( or more, I do not actually measure, feel free to “sprinkle”)

Chopped parsley for garnish

Directions:

• Cut chicken in half, clean and put in a big pot with 18 cups of water.   Add onions and leave on medium low heat for an hour for more to make broth.  Remove chicken from pot when meat is tender.  Remove meat from bones and shred into 1 inch thick pieces.  Discard bones.
• Add one cup of uncooked rice into the broth*.  Add 2/3 of ginger into the pot and set at low to medium heat, covered.  This step takes about an hour or more.  Stir occasionally.  You will see the rice cooked slowly as it started rising to the top.  When done, the broth has similar texture of porridge or grit. 
• Add fish sauce and salt and sprinkle black pepper.  Again, taste your soup and see if you want it to be more salty.  
• Add 2/3 scallion and cook soup for another 5 minutes 
• Turn off heat.  Ladle soup into bowls, sprinkle some fresh ginger, scallion and parsley on top for garnish.

 *Another version of this soup is to put the uncooked rice into a hot frying pan and stir occasionally until the rice turns light brown.  Use this rice to make soup. The broth will have a delicious “burned” taste that many of us love.

** If you want the soup texture to be thicker, add less water to make chicken broth, such as 14 instead of 18 cups. 

This chicken soup is not only easy to make, it allows you to do a lot of housework while the pot is on the stove!  It takes more than an hour to finish, but it is the kind of dish which does not require a lot of attention except for occasional stirring to make sure the rice doesn’t stick to the bottom of the pot.  Another option would be to transfer the chicken broth into a crock pot and make the rest of the steps in this pot.  Leave it on low to medium heat and a few hours later, you would have a delicious soup! 

I hope you enjoy the two dishes as much as we have over the years!