Tết Nguyên Đán/Lunar New Year/Spring Festival Almond Biscuit

The Lunar New Year, Chinese New Year, or Tet, starts on February 14, 2010, and will herald the Year of the Tiger. (I’ll refrain from golf jokes here.)

While this time of year has a number of mixed memories for me, it does remind one of the large number of wonderful Asian dishes available to us.

Within Asia, regional customs and traditions concerning the celebration of the new year vary widely.

People will pour out their money to buy presents, decoration, material, food, and clothing. It is also the tradition that every family thoroughly cleans the house to sweep away any ill-fortune in hopes to make way for good incoming luck. Windows and doors will be decorated with red color paper-cuts and couplets with popular themes of “happiness”, “wealth”, and “longevity”.

On the Eve of the New Year, supper is a feast with families, and will include such items as pigs, ducks, chicken and sweet delicacies, like the one below.

In Vietnam, to celebrate Tết is to ăn Tết, literally meaning “Tết eating”, showing the importance of food in its celebration. Some of the food is also eaten year-round, while other dishes are only eaten during Tết. Also, some of the food is vegetarian since it is believed to be good luck to eat vegetarian on Tết.

I’ll do a number of Asian dishes from various regions over the coming week

Let’s start with a staple sweet of these events. The Almond Biscuit …

Almond biscuit (also called almond cake or almond cookie) is a type of Chinese pastry, small with no filling by default. It is also crunchy, sometimes crumbling on first bite. It is one of the most standard pastries in Hong Kong. In Macau the snack has been one of the most popular specialty products. But there will be that rogue chef twist…

Preparation:

1. Preheat oven to 375F
2. Macerate the Cherries in the bourbon
3. Cream Butter and Sugar in a mixer
4. Add eggs singularly
5. Add extracts and blend well
6. In separate bowl, sift together flours, salt, baking powder, and ground almonds
7. Add flour mixture to butter in smal batches
8. Blend well
9. Fold in slivered almonds, and 1/2 the cherries
10. Turn out onto floured work surface
11. Roll out to approx ~3/8″ thick
12. Cut to desired shapes
13. Insert one cherry into the center each cookie
14. Place on parchment paper and bake 8-10 m
15. Cool on rack

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