Get Ready for Lunar New Year With ‘Lucky Rice,’ an Asian Fusion Food Cookbook
Yahoo Food’s Cookbook of the Week is Lucky Rice: Stories and Recipes from Night Markets, Feasts, and Family Tables by Danielle Chang (Clarkson Potter), founder of the LUCKYRICE festival and host and creator of Lucky Chow on PBS.
“Asian food is really a great way to share stories about Asian culture,” says Danielle Chang, the mastermind behind the LUCKYRICE festival, a multi-city celebration of Asian culture and cuisine, and author of the recently published cookbook, Lucky Rice: Stories and Recipes from Night Markets, Feasts, and Family Tables.
The book, explains Chang, “is an outgrowth of the LUCKYRICE festival and all the great people and flavor combinations and stories I’ve heard.” In the last decade or so, Asian cuisine has taken on incredible global momentum, notes Chang. The world has a “growing obsession with Asian food and culture,” and at the same time there’s a ton of innovation taking place.
Much of that innovation involves what could derisively be called “fusion cuisine.” The “f” word may be banned in most food circles, but Chang is eager to defend it: “I think Asian food is nothing if not fusion, because if you look at the landscape of Asian cuisine in America it reflects the various populations that have come together to create these new dishes.”
Bibimbap (Photograph: Christina Holmes)
Chang points to Kimchi Tacos — a recipe from her book that was inspired by Roy Choi’s game-changing Los Angeles food truck — as a perfect example of a dish that is both authentic and fusion. “It’s the product of Koreans and Hispanics living side-by-side in L.A.’s Koreatown after the L.A. riots, reclaiming that community, and in a way creating a brave new cuisine that is fused out of just living together over all these decades.”
Along with those tacos, Chang’s book features an entire chapter devoted to what she calls “Asian mash-ups.” These include familiar favorites like Chicken Tikka Masala and Vietnamese Banh Mi, as well as Chang’s take on the Jewish Pastrami Egg Rolls served at New York’s Red Farm and her ginger- and Sriracha-spiked Asian Gazpacho.
Feasting and eating foods with auspicious meanings are also “a huge part of Asian culture,” says Chang, and something she wanted to highlight in the book. Her Lucky Feasts chapter includes banquet-style dishes like Whole Steamed Fish, Shanghainese Drunken Chicken, and Longevity Noodles. She also includes 10 festive menus that pull recipes from throughout the book and she encourages mixing and matching to create your own feasts.
Jewish Pastrami Egg Rolls (Photograph: Christina Holmes)
Communal eating and lucky foods are particularly important at Lunar New Year, which takes place in early February this year. Chang says it’s common to have a dumpling making party and for everyone to eat the dumplings at midnight. The gathering is part of the feasting tradition, while the dumplings themselves are considered lucky. Their shape resembles an early form of Chinese currency, so dumplings symbolize wealth and longevity, but to bestow extra good fortune, some people hide gold coins inside.
This is the year of the fire monkey and according to Chang, that means it’s going to be an especially vibrant and passionate year, as well as “a particularly auspicious year for innovation.” If we’re all lucky, that could mean the birth of another great Asian mash-up, maybe even the next kimchi taco.
Visit Yahoo Food throughout the week for recipes from Lucky Rice: Stories and Recipes from Night Markets, Feasts, and Family Tables by Danielle Chang (Clarkson Potter).
Check out other cookbooks from Yahoo Food’s Cookbook of the Week:
Vegetarian India by Madhur Jaffrey
Lucky Peach Presents 101 Easy Asian Recipes
NOPI by Yotam Ottolenghi and Ramael Scully
