Asian Food Night

I attempted to make some Chinese food last night. I have never made much Asian food in the past even though I cook quite a bit. I have received a few Asian cookbooks over the past couple of months and now that work has calmed down a bit I thought I would try a few recipes. I started out with some pretty basic things. I made potstickers. The recipe ended up making about 40 of them but once I figured out how to assemble them it actually went fairly quickly. I ended up freezing about half of them for later.

They had great flavor and we used plain soy sauce for dipping. To cook the potstickers you brown them in a bit of oil first and then pour chicken broth in the pan and almost steam them until all of the liquid is absorbed. Stand back when

Gong Xi Fa Cai!

That means Happy New Year in Mandarin...I think! Blogger wouldn't allow me to use the Chinese characters but it should be close. For those of you that speak Mandarin please feel free to correct me. The Chinese New Year kicked off last Thursday Feb. 3rd. Happy year of the Rabbit! We didn't end up getting to really celebrate it this year due to some other circumstances but we are hoping next year we will be celebrating it with our son or daughter. We plan to make it a celebration every year with family and friends to help celebrate their Chinese culture, so expect invites next year!

The Chinese New Year is a celebration that lasts 15 days and is similar in importance and some ideas as the Christmas/ New Year's season in the United States.  Each year has an animal associated with it and everyone has a Chinese zodiac animal. It does not exactly correspond to birth years. This is the year of the Rabbit. I am