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Charity’s Shelter Island Kitchen: The Year of the Snake

In the dead of winter, I often think of a party I attended in Florida in the late 1960s. I was 9, and my mother was a professor at the University of Florida, teaching English-as-a-Second-Language. Most of her students were Chinese, and our family was invited to a Lunar New Year party. I think it was the Year of the Monkey.

That party made an impression on me. Tables laden with wonderfully fragrant and completely unfamiliar dishes, pyramids of oranges and candied kumquats and someone’s uncle wearing a dragon’s head mask chasing us children, as we ran around grabbing candy.

It was the perfect party: old family, new friends, great food, and wacky, superstitious customs. 

My sisters and my parents had fun too, so my mother learned to cook some Chinese dishes, adding sweet-and-sour pork, and peanut noodles, to her repertoire of celebration foods.

One of the best things about the Lunar New Year is that it comes around when you really need a good excuse for a party. Just when you’re about to despair at the dearth of daylight, and frigid temperatures, along comes Lunar New Year to wrap you in some long, tasty noodles.

When the festivities begin on Wednesday, Jan. 29, I’ll be welcoming the Year of the Snake.

In most Asian cultures, the celebration of the Lunar New Year is more than the familiar American New Year’s Eve bash followed by a hangover and black-eyed peas.  It’s a two-week series of parties to celebrate birthdays as well as the year just passed and the one to come.

Every year is assigned one of 12 animals of the zodiac. Your animal (I’m a dog-woman) is determined by the year of your birth. If you know anyone expecting a baby in the next week or so, tell them to get going because the year we are leaving behind on Jan. 29 is a Dragon Year, and it’s considered the most auspicious year to be born.

In 1986, my husband and I were newlyweds, and traveled to China. As I got a better look at the country and its people, I realized that many of the values of traditional Chinese culture, such as a reverence for education and teaching, and a preoccupation with food and the art of cooking, were values I shared.

I think it was around that time that we started observing the Lunar New Year tradition at home. I found a dragon’s head mask, made several hundred dumplings, arranged pyramids of citrus fruit, and invited people over. At some point I started calling our celebration Lunar New Year, instead of Chinese, when I learned that the holiday is celebrated by Chinese, Mongolian, Korean, Tibetan, and Vietnamese folks, and each culture adapts the rituals to their own foods and customs.

Over 30 years, the Sino-Robey Lunar New Year rituals have evolved. In the 1990s and 2000s we used to get a crowd of youngsters, so I’d set up a dumpling-making station, and boy, was that a fine mess. Now my sons are old enough not to need supervision in food preparation, and the older one makes scallion pancakes at the party, which is still a fine mess.

I’ve gotten bolder in experimenting with dumpling stuffing and dipping sauces. I’ve expanded my repertoire to include gluten-free and vegan dumplings (the secret is tofu). I’ve learned to never put a steamy basket of dumplings down on a wood table. (Anyone want to strip and refinish the cherry dining table in my basement?) I’ve learned that those colorful trays of dried fruit you buy in Chinatown are purely decorative, and woe to the unwary party-goer who tries to eat a candied lotus root like a cookie. It does not crumble.

Occasionally Asian friends give me pointers: more noisemakers, no sunflowers, spring flowers only. When you make sesame noodles, don’t cut them. They should be as long as possible to symbolize longevity. Serve the fish whole since it symbolizes family unity. Grateful for suggestions, I like the rituals that make this party more meaningful, and more reflective of our values.

The same values we share with every other Lunar New Year party-er out there dancing with a paper mâché dragon on their head to make the children laugh, banish the old year, and welcome spring.

Longevity Noodles

1 pound long, linguini-like egg  
   noodles, preferably fresh or frozen

2/3 cup sesame paste, smooth
   peanut butter or a combination

1 T. grated ginger root

2 crushed and minced garlic cloves

1 T. Chinese black vinegar

1 T. rice vinegar

2 T. sugar

3 T. soy sauce

2 T. sesame oil

2 tsp. chili crisp or Tabasco,

   or hot sesame oil

5 minced scallions, the white

   and a little of the green part

½ cup seeded and peeled cucumber,
   coarsely chopped

Cook fresh noodles in plenty of boiling, salted water, leaving them uncut, and as long as possible. Reserve a cup of the cooking water.

Combine the sesame paste/peanut butter, ginger, garlic, black vinegar, rice vinegar, sugar, soy sauce, sesame oil and chili sauce in a large serving bowl and whisk until smooth.

Pour the warm cooked noodles into the sauce and fold together gently.

Add a little of the hot water from cooking to noodles to loosen the sauce so it coats the noodles.

Add the minced scallions.

Garnish with the chopped cucumber.