- And everybody will gather together
and eat really delicious food and have a great time.
Hi, I'm Yidi.
Today I'll show you how to make
Chinese dumplings, jiao zi.
So, in Chinese homes dumplings are
a traditional must-have food on New Year's Eve.
Families wrap them up and eat them
as the clock strikes at midnight.
The finished dumpling dough texture
should be soft, but not too wet.
Resting the dough can make the dough
feel really smooth and soft so it makes
the kneading process easier later.
I think adding ground Sichuan pepper
is a secret ingredient I've learned
from my mom making dumplings.
If you taste it by itself, it gives you
a little numbing on the tongue.
However, when you put it in the stuffing,
it will give you depths and flavor.
My personal twist to the recipe is adding shrimp to it.
Adding shrimps to the recipe provides you
a more refreshing flavor and I hope
other people can enjoy it, as well.
I remember when I was a kid on Chinese New Year Eve
my entire family, a full house of people,
they will stand together and make the dumplings
and my mom will always save the extra dough
for me and my little cousin.
We would just play with it for the night.
Shaping the dough into a doughnut shape
helps you to get an even rope out of the dough
so later when you portion it you can
get a nice, even smaller portions out of it, as well.
So I think that's a cool trick from my mom.
When you're portioning dough, that's also another trick
I learned from just watching how my family does it.
The turning technique will help you
get a nearly more perfect ball
when you try to ball it up later.
Eating dumplings reminds me of making it
with my parents and my extended family
on all different occasions.
It could be a weekend dinner or Chinese New Year.
Since now I'm away from home, I live abroad,
whenever I eat dumplings, I think about
my family members and how they're doing.
A younger me, before I left home,
I wasn't super into dumplings at all,
but when I moved away from home
when I was in Chicago living with my roommate,
we would make dumplings sometimes
because it makes me feel homey
and it's a remedy for homesick.
- It's always been about family and food.
Hi, I'm Holly and today I'll be showing you
how to make jing yue, or a whole steamed fish.
So, this fish is just traditional served
during Chinese New Year dinner.
It represents a good year from start to finish
and in this case, head to tail.
Yue also sounds like "prosperity" in Chinese,
so that's why we eat it.
So, this recipe is very important to me
because I've been eating it basically
all throughout my life.
My grandma or mom would cook it for dinner
almost every day of the week,
at least three or four times a week
and it just reminds me of my childhood.
So, the flavor is just a good balance
or salty and savory and just that umami flavor
that a lot of Asian dishes have.
For a majority of China, they would eat it similar way.
Today we use red snapper, but you can
totally use tilapia or sea bass.
My mom usually uses live whole fish.
So, a good trick to know when the fish is done
is to poke the thickest part of the fish.
That's where you'll know, you can test it
to see if it's cooked all the way through
or if you need a little bit more time for it to cook.
What I'm most proud of, having both cultures
is definitely the food and the variety of dishes
that I'm able to try ever since I was young.
I love my hamburgers and pizza,
but having different cultures in my background
is also amazing in itself.
Chinese New Year is just a celebration
of the start of a new year in the Chinese calendar,
similar to American New Year's,
just a nice way to refresh the year.
I've been celebrating lunar new year since I was young.
How we celebrate it is eating a large family dinner
with my uncles and my aunts and parents
and my grandparents, just everyone
gathering around the table.
- [Male Voice] Oh yes!
(speaking foreign language)
(calming jazz music)