In other related news, we have a project under way. Turns out our 16th anniversary (as a couple) happens to fall right on Chinese New Year, so we're whipping up a small dumpling party to celebrate.

We've done these in the past, and while they tend toward the Asian, the only hard and fast rule is that we celebrate enclosed foodstuffs from all cultures - valid examples would be pirogies, raviolis, empanadas, samosas, whatever. The plan is to spend most of the next two weeks making, assembling, and wherever possible, freezing items so that they can then be cooked at the party location. The current plans are for:

1) Butternut squash and goat cheese filled pasta. The filling is based on this recipe, but has roasted garlic replacing the sautéed onion and garlic. I actually made a big batch of this weeks ago and froze it, and I'm gonna cheat and use wonton wrappers as the pasta.

2) Alton Brown's tofu dumplings. I've made these a few times before, and they are fairly awesome. I'm going to try and tweak the recipe so that there's less stray liquid, however, as that's been a problem in the past.

3) Lemongrass shrimp dumplings. I really like the crisp, herbal flavor of lemongrass, and some recent experimentation showed that it works realliy nicely with shrimp. So I'm going to wing something and see how it turns out.

4) BBQ pork mini-bao. Using a modification to my recipe for Chinese barbecue pork, and Cathy's mom's recipe for pork bao that can be baked and frozen. The pork is marinating right now, and I'll be updating the pork recipe post shortly with this variation.