Lifestyle
Food holds special meaning on the Lunar New Year. Readers share their favorite dishes
NPR readers share the dishes they love most for the Lunar New Year.
Jing Gao; Alvina Chu; Amy Fedun; Beth Rogers-Ho; Alice Young; Elsy MektrakarnNguyen; Sarah Low; Anh Therese McCauley
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Jing Gao; Alvina Chu; Amy Fedun; Beth Rogers-Ho; Alice Young; Elsy MektrakarnNguyen; Sarah Low; Anh Therese McCauley
NPR readers share the dishes they love most for the Lunar New Year.
Jing Gao; Alvina Chu; Amy Fedun; Beth Rogers-Ho; Alice Young; Elsy MektrakarnNguyen; Sarah Low; Anh Therese McCauley
More than a billion people worldwide will celebrate the Lunar New Year on Saturday as they usher in the Year of the Dragon. It’s called Tet in Vietnam, Tsagaan Sar in Mongolia and Seollal in Korea. Whether it’s celebrated in Asia or abroad, the annual holiday is a time for many to honor elders, spend time with family, reflect on the past year and wish for a lucky year ahead.
Candied coconut, or mut dua, is a common dish seen at Vietnamese New Year celebrations.
Suzanne Nuyen
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Suzanne Nuyen
Candied coconut, or mut dua, is a common dish seen at Vietnamese New Year celebrations.
Suzanne Nuyen
Like most holidays, a bountiful spread of food is essential to Lunar New Year festivities. In my Vietnamese household, rice cakes called banh chung and candied fruits called mut are as essential to the New Year as turkey and mashed potatoes are to Thanksgiving. Traditional foods vary across Asian cultures. Some have even evolved as Asian diaspora communities invite others to share in their traditions.
I wanted to know what dishes NPR readers couldn’t go without on the Lunar New Year. These were some of the dishes that stood out as favorites, plus one special recipe a reader created for her grandchildren.
Responses have been edited for length and clarity
Banh chung
Banh chung and banh tet are quintessential parts of a Vietnamese Lunar New Year meal.
Suzanne Nuyen
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Suzanne Nuyen
Banh chung and banh tet are quintessential parts of a Vietnamese Lunar New Year meal.
Suzanne Nuyen
Making banh chung involves a labor intensive process. Often, the entire family is roped in to help.
Suzanne Nuyen
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Suzanne Nuyen
Making banh chung involves a labor intensive process. Often, the entire family is roped in to help.
Suzanne Nuyen
Vietnam’s quintessential Lunar New Year dish is a labor of love. Banana leaves are meticulously washed, then wrapped around sticky rice filled with pork belly and mung beans. The cakes are boiled for hours before they’re ready to eat. It often takes a whole family to make the dish.
For Yolanda Vo, the dish reminds her of her refugee parents, who brought their tradition to the U.S. nearly 50 years ago. Sahra Nguyen watches her mom make the “shockingly laborious” cakes every year. She wrote that she sees her mom’s love for her family in her dedication to making the dish. “I feel deeply grateful for the opportunity to enjoy each bite because I know it’s one of her biggest displays of love,” wrote Nguyen.
Hot pot
Alvina Chu loves hot pot for the new year because “the meal gathers us around the pot to commune with each other and enjoy our favorite bites.”
Alvina Chu
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Alvina Chu
Alvina Chu loves hot pot for the new year because “the meal gathers us around the pot to commune with each other and enjoy our favorite bites.”
Alvina Chu
Amy Fedun’s special hot pot includes whole grilled or baked fish and lamb chops.
Amy Fedun
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Amy Fedun
Amy Fedun’s special hot pot includes whole grilled or baked fish and lamb chops.
Amy Fedun
There are endless varieties of Hot pot across Asia. It’s also known as Chinese fondue or huoguo in China. In Vietnam, it’s called lau. In Japan: shabu-shabu. All the dishes involve cooking meats, noodles and vegetables communally in a pot of broth.
“It gathers the family around a single pot to linger and commune with each other,” Alvina Chu wrote. “Everyone gets to pick what they like — and the prep is no-stress for mom!”
Amy Fedun wrote that she loves a steamy pot on cold days. She tops her special hotpot with a whole grilled or baked fish, then stacks grilled lamb chops cut to look like bear paws on top of the fish. “There’s a [Mandarin] saying that literally goes, ‘you can’t have both fish and bear paw,’ meaning you have to make a choice between two desirable things,” wrote Fedun “Well, here at my new year’s table, you get to enjoy both.”
Fresh fruit
In Vietnam, a display of fresh fruit represents gratitude to your ancestors on the new year.
Suzanne Nuyen
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Suzanne Nuyen
In Vietnam, a display of fresh fruit represents gratitude to your ancestors on the new year.
Suzanne Nuyen
Anh Therese McCauley thinks durian is a “weird fruit,” but loves it on the Lunar New Year regardless.
Anh Therese McCauley
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Anh Therese McCauley
Anh Therese McCauley thinks durian is a “weird fruit,” but loves it on the Lunar New Year regardless.
Anh Therese McCauley
The highlight of Anh Therese McCauley’s Lunar New Year meals is when her mother brings out the durian fruit. It’s an acquired taste. Its smell has been described as similar to a gas leak. But many covet its custardy taste and texture, calling it “crème brûlée on a tree.” “It’s such a weird fruit, but we can claim it as ours in the Asian diaspora, and I can’t help but love that,” McCauley wrote.
Jessica Hoang’s Vietnamese fruit of choice is the mang cau, or custard apple. Her grandma always had it in her home during the new year. Her mother would tell her stories of growing up eating the fruit in Vietnam and using the seeds to play a marbles game. “My grandma was an intimidating woman — tough, cold and not afraid to be direct,” Hoang wrote. “But her way of showing she cared was giving us food and telling us to eat. In those moments, for a few minutes, a young me was able to be close to my grandma.”
Hainanese chicken
Elsy MektrakarnNguyen’s family always includes Hainan chicken rice as part of their Lunar New Year table.
Elsy MektrakarnNguyen
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Elsy MektrakarnNguyen
Elsy MektrakarnNguyen’s family always includes Hainan chicken rice as part of their Lunar New Year table.
Elsy MektrakarnNguyen
Elsy MektrakarnNguyen’s family has its roots in Hainan, China, just as this chicken and rice dish does. Hainanese migrants took the recipe with them when they migrated across Southeast Asia. The meal of poached chicken and garlic rice cooked in the chicken’s broth is now an iconic fixture in Singaporean street food.
MektrakarnNguyen’s family moved to Thailand before her mother was born. Though the new year, or Songkran, is celebrated there in April, her family continued to celebrate the Lunar New Year. Hainanese chicken, or khao man gai in Thai, was often part of the table of offerings to their ancestors.
“The garlic rice was precooked with LOTS of garlic and chicken fat,” she wrote. “My house would smell of garlic for days after cooking it. The smells of my childhood.”
Braised pork belly
Thit kho trung, or caramelized pork belly with eggs, is Kimberly Huynh’s favorite Lunar New Year dish. She loves how the meat falls apart after hours of braising.
Suzanne Nuyen
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Suzanne Nuyen
Thit kho trung, or caramelized pork belly with eggs, is Kimberly Huynh’s favorite Lunar New Year dish. She loves how the meat falls apart after hours of braising.
Suzanne Nuyen
Like many of the dishes mentioned above, a version of braised pork belly appears on many Lunar New Year tables across Asia. In Vietnam, hard-boiled eggs are added to the dish called thịt kho trứng. “Thịt kho paired with white rice is so comforting,” Kimberly Huynh wrote. “It braises for hours and it just falls apart when it’s ready to be eaten.”
Carrie Huang, from Taipei, Taiwan, enjoys a similar dish from Hangzhou, China called Dongpo pork. She wrote that the layers in the pork belly “represent seasons of the year and the good times and challenging times, similar to the rings inside the trunk of a tree showing the tough years and the good years.”
Jai
Sarah Low isn’t the biggest fan of jai, but she makes it because it reminds her of her culture and her late grandparents.
Sarah Low
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Sarah Low
Sarah Low isn’t the biggest fan of jai, but she makes it because it reminds her of her culture and her late grandparents.
Sarah Low
Sarah Low wrote that she used to hate jai, also known as Buddha’s delight or lo han jai. Still, she makes this vegetarian dish every year to remember her late grandparents and the culture she grew up in. “It’s a dish that is so different than what I cook all year long,” she wrote. “It’s a great way to remember the past and be mindful of the present.”
As for whether she still hates it? “I find I appreciate the flavors, but it’s never going to be my favorite,” Low wrote.
Rice cake soup
A view of Tteokguk during the Korean Food Foundation Luncheon at Bann on February 1, 2011 in New York City.
Mike Coppola/Getty Images
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Mike Coppola/Getty Images
A view of Tteokguk during the Korean Food Foundation Luncheon at Bann on February 1, 2011 in New York City.
Mike Coppola/Getty Images
It’s not Korean New Year, or seollal, without this rice cake soup called tteokguk. The coin-shaped rice cakes are thought to bring prosperity and riches, and its white color symbolizes a fresh start to the New Year.
Myung Armstrong garnishes her tteokguk with seaweed and julliened egg omelette. She wrote that the warm, savory beef broth and soft, chewy rice cakes bring “very happy memories making it with my mother.”
Dumplings
Mikayla Sanford’s makes Tibetan momos every year for the new year. Sometimes, her family can make hundreds of them.
Mikayla Sanford
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Mikayla Sanford
Mikayla Sanford’s makes Tibetan momos every year for the new year. Sometimes, her family can make hundreds of them.
Mikayla Sanford
Dumplings originated in Northern China and spread around the world. They are thought to bring fortune in the new year because they’re shaped like ancient Chinese money. Zhong dumplings, one of the most iconic street snacks of Chengdu, China, are a key part of Jing Gao’s Lunar New Year table.
Mikayla Sanford’s dumpling of choice are momos. They hail from Tibet, where the Lunar New Year is known as Losar. “Tibetan’s never had much flour or meat, so momos were always prepared for special occasions,” she wrote. “My family has been making them since I was a child. We even get together with huge steaming vats to make hundreds of momos during the new year.”
RECIPE: Alice Young’s “No Fuss Grandchildren’s Chinese Dumplings”
This recipe was provided by Alice Young.
Alice Young’s “No Fuss Grandchildren’s Chinese Dumplings”
Alice Young
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Alice Young
Alice Young’s “No Fuss Grandchildren’s Chinese Dumplings”
Alice Young
Alice Young has a unique dumpling recipe that she calls “No Fuss Grandchildren’s Chinese Dumplings.” She spent decades as a law partner and wrote that she had to be “creative and quick” with her food. She created this recipe for her “young, blue-eyed and blonde grandchildren.” They live in North Carolina, where Chinese communities are scarce. To adapt, Young’s recipe uses ingredients that are easy to find and childproof.
Alice Young came up with her dumpling recipe using ingredients that are easy to find in North Carolina and steps that her grandchildren can follow along with.
Alice Young
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Alice Young
Alice Young came up with her dumpling recipe using ingredients that are easy to find in North Carolina and steps that her grandchildren can follow along with.
Alice Young
Ingredients:
- rotisserie or any cooked chicken or meat or sausage, or firm tofu, diced
- chopped green onions or chives or cabbage, or a mix
- mayonnaise or vegenaise
- hoisin sauce
- oyster sauce
- sesame seed oil
- wonton wrappers
Directions:
- In a medium-size bowl mix equal portions of chicken/meat/tofu and chopped greens.
- Add mayonnaise, hoisin sauce, and a splash of oyster sauce and sesame oil until the mixture has the consistency of a sticky filling and tastes good to the sampling grandchild.
- Put a teaspoon of filling in a wonton wrap, lightly wet the edges of the wrap with water on your fingertips, and seal each dumpling in either a triangle or with a crimped edge, depending on the skill and interest of the grandchild.
- Optional- if the grandchild is forewarned and is not likely to swallow a small toy gold coin, sneak one into one of the dumplings as a lucky dumpling.
- Boil a pot of water and drop the finished dumplings in and cook for 6 minutes, until the dumpling wraps are cooked
- For fried dumplings. heat a pan with peanut or almond oil on medium heat, and fry the dumplings for 5 minutes until crispy on the bottom, add a splash of water and cover for 1-2 minutes until the water has evaporated and the dumpling wraps are cooked.
- Serve with soy sauce mixed with rice vinegar and sugar.
Timothée Chalamet plays a shoe salesman who dreams of becoming the greatest table tennis player in the world in Marty Supreme.
A24
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A24
Last year, while accepting a Screen Actors Guild award for A Complete Unknown, Timothée Chalamet told the audience, “I want to be one of the greats; I’m inspired by the greats.” Many criticized him for his immodesty, but I found it refreshing: After all, Chalamet has never made a secret of his ambition in his interviews or his choice of material.
In his best performances, you can see both the character and the actor pushing themselves to greatness, the way Chalamet did playing Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown, which earned him the second of two Oscar nominations. He’s widely expected to receive a third for his performance in Josh Safdie’s thrilling new movie, Marty Supreme, in which Chalamet pushes himself even harder still.
Chalamet plays Marty Mauser, a 23-year-old shoe salesman in 1952 New York who dreams of being recognized as the greatest table-tennis player in the world. He’s a brilliant player, but for a poor Lower East Side Jewish kid like Marty, playing brilliantly isn’t enough: Simply getting to championship tournaments in London and Tokyo will require money he doesn’t have.
And so Marty, a scrappy, speedy dynamo with a silver tongue and inhuman levels of chutzpah, sets out to borrow, steal, cheat, sweet-talk and hustle his way to the top. He spends almost the entire movie on the run, shaking down friends and shaking off family members, hatching new scams and fleeing the folks he’s already scammed, and generally trying to extricate himself from disasters of his own making.
Marty is very loosely based on the real-life table-tennis pro Marty Reisman. But as a character, he’s cut from the same cloth as the unstoppable antiheroes of Uncut Gems and Good Time, both of which Josh Safdie directed with his brother Benny. Although Josh directed Marty Supreme solo, the ferocious energy of his filmmaking is in line with those earlier New York nail-biters, only this time with a period setting. Most of the story unfolds against a seedy, teeming postwar Manhattan, superbly rendered by the veteran production designer Jack Fisk as a world of shadowy game rooms and rundown apartments.
Early on, though, Marty does make his way to London, where he finagles a room at the same hotel as Kay Stone, a movie star past her 1930s prime. She’s played by Gwyneth Paltrow, in a luminous and long-overdue return to the big screen. Marty is soon having a hot fling with Kay, even as he tries to swindle her ruthless businessman husband, Milton Rockwell, played by the Canadian entrepreneur and Shark Tank regular Kevin O’Leary.
Marty Supreme is full of such ingenious, faintly meta bits of stunt casting. The rascally independent filmmaker Abel Ferrara turns up as a dog-loving mobster. The real-life table-tennis star Koto Kawaguchi plays a Japanese champ who beats Marty in London and leaves him spoiling for a rematch. And Géza Röhrig, from the Holocaust drama Son of Saul, pops up as Marty’s friend Bela Kletzki, a table tennis champ who survived Auschwitz. Bela tells his story in one of the film’s best and strangest scenes, a death-camp flashback that proves crucial to the movie’s meaning.
In one early scene, Marty brags to some journalists that he’s “Hitler’s worst nightmare.” It’s not a stretch to read Marty Supreme as a kind of geopolitical parable, culminating in an epic table-tennis match, pitting a Jewish player against a Japanese one, both sides seeking a hard-won triumph after the horrors of World War II.
The personal victory that Marty seeks would also be a symbolic one, striking a blow for Jewish survival and assimilation — and regeneration: I haven’t yet mentioned a crucial subplot involving Marty’s close friend Rachel, terrifically played by Odessa A’zion, who’s carrying his child and gets sucked into his web of lies.
Josh Safdie, who co-wrote and co-edited the film with Ronald Bronstein, doesn’t belabor his ideas. He’s so busy entertaining you, as Marty ping-pongs from one catastrophe to the next, that you’d be forgiven for missing what’s percolating beneath the movie’s hyperkinetic surface.
Marty himself, the most incorrigible movie protagonist in many a moon, has already stirred much debate; many find his company insufferable and his actions indefensible. But the movies can be a wonderfully amoral medium, and I found myself liking Marty Mauser — and not just liking him, but actually rooting for him to succeed. It takes more than a good actor to pull that off. It takes one of the greats.
Hungarian director Béla Tarr at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2011.
Andreas Rentz/Getty Images
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Andreas Rentz/Getty Images
Béla Tarr, the Hungarian arthouse director best known for his bleak, existential and challenging films, including Sátántangó and Werckmeister Harmonies, has died at the age of 70. The Hungarian Filmmakers’ Association shared a statement on Tuesday announcing Tarr’s passing after a serious illness, but did not specify further details.
Tarr was born in communist-era Hungary in 1955 and made his filmmaking debut in 1979 with Family Nest, the first of nine feature films that would culminate in his 2011 film The Turin Horse. Damnation, released in 1988 at the Berlin International Film Festival, was his first film to draw global acclaim, and launched Tarr from a little-known director of social dramas to a fixture on the international film festival circuit.
Tarr’s reputation for films tinged with misery and hard-heartedness, distinguished by black-and-white cinematography and unusually long sequences, only grew throughout the 1990s and 2000s, particularly after his 1994 film Sátántangó. The epic drama, following a Hungarian village facing the fallout of communism, is best known for its length, clocking in at seven-and-a-half hours.
Based on the novel by Hungarian writer László Krasznahorkai, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature last year and frequently collaborated with Tarr, the film became a touchstone for the “slow cinema” movement, with Tarr joining the ranks of directors such as Andrei Tarkovsky, Chantal Akerman and Theo Angelopoulos. Writer and critic Susan Sontag hailed Sátántangó as “devastating, enthralling for every minute of its seven hours.”
Tarr’s next breakthrough came in 2000 with his film Werckmeister Harmonies, the first of three movies co-directed by his partner, the editor Ágnes Hranitzky. Another loose adaptation of a Krasznahorkai novel, the film depicts the strange arrival of a circus in a small town in Hungary. With only 39 shots making up the film’s two-and-a-half-hour runtime, Tarr’s penchant for long takes was on full display.
Like Sátántangó, it was a major success with both critics and the arthouse crowd. Both films popularized Tarr’s style and drew the admiration of independent directors such as Jim Jarmusch and Gus Van Sant, the latter of which cited Tarr as a direct influence on his films: “They get so much closer to the real rhythms of life that it is like seeing the birth of a new cinema. He is one of the few genuinely visionary filmmakers.”
The actress Tilda Swinton is another admirer of Tarr’s, and starred in the filmmaker’s 2007 film The Man from London. At the premiere, Tarr announced that his next film would be his last. That 2011 film, The Turin Horse, was typically bleak but with an apocalyptic twist, following a man and his daughter as they face the end of the world. The film won the Grand Jury Prize at the Berlin International Film Festival.
After the release of The Turin Horse, Tarr opened an international film program in 2013 called film.factory as part of the Sarajevo Film Academy. He led and taught in the school for four years, inviting various filmmakers and actors to teach workshops and mentor students, including Swinton, Van Sant, Jarmusch, Juliette Binoche and Gael García Bernal.
In the last years of his life, he worked on a number of artistic projects, including an exhibition at a film museum in Amsterdam. He remained politically outspoken throughout his life, condemning the rise of nationalism and criticizing the government of Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán.
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