Happy New Year!

"Akemashite Omedetou Gozaimasu!"(Happy New Year in Japanese)

The Japanese celebrate January 1 every year with traditional rites and food. Of all the annual holidays in Japan, the New Year is often spoken of as the "most Japanese" of celebrations. The traditional New Year's celebration is sprinkled with symbolism, particularly evident in typical New Year's food (Osechi-ryori). It’s translation to America takes on a more international slant as each generation brings new foods to the table. Originally, the women of each household prepared foods for days and put the spread out for the men to travel from house to house to toast each other with sake and eat certain foods to insure good health, prosperity, happiness, and good luck. Today, families choose one house in which to gather and the food items are” pot lucked” to spread the work out among all the families. It is a day to bid farewell to the problems & concerns of the past year & prepare for a new beginning. Misunderstandings & grudges are forgiven and houses & bodies are scrubbed of last year’s dirt. New Year's day itself is a day of joy & no work is to be done. Also, a modernization of the ritual, at least in our household, includes watching the Rose Bowl parade and game. Bill & I actually got to go the parade and game the year Stanford went to the Rose Bowl and I abandoned my cousin, Mary, to hold the NY festivities for the family.

I share a few photos of the dishes here for you, with sparse descriptions since I didn’t prepare most of them. And, not being the conscientious photographer that Willie is, I forgot to take photos of foods that arrived later in the day. You’ll notice however, that there are not only Japanese dishes represented but also Chinese, American, Hawaiian, Filipino and pan-Asian. It is important to have fowl, meat, soy beans, fresh fruit and seafood on the table. We had a lot of desserts that came from different cultures as well.

Fried Won Tons with Sweet & Sour Sauce is an appetizer type dish that my sister-in-law, Maxine makes for every family occasion. She fills the won ton skins with a ground pork and spices mix and fries them in hot oil. She serves them with canned Contadina Sweet and Sour sauce. It is a family favorite and we count on her to bring these yummy, tasty treats.


I made the Edamame Salad, a recipe from Eric Gower’s Breakaway Kitchen Cookbook. It is made with edamame beans, julienned pink pickled ginger, vinegar from the pickled ginger, chopped roasted almonds and pieces of chives. Janis made it for one of our Cookbook Club dinners and it was so good that I thought I’d make it for New Years.

My Auntie Dorothy makes various Sushi filled with different pickled vegetables & Inside-Out California Rolls. It makes such a pretty presentation with all the different colors of the purple pickles, bright pink pickles, green cucumber pickles. I have no idea what the original vegetables were for the pickles but they were all a great contrast to the sweet sushi rice.

Makisushi is homestyle sushi that you rarely see at any sushi restaurant. It has a seaweed, “nori”, wrapped around various things in the middle ranging from cooked egg, seaweed, pickled ginger, pickled gourd (kanpyō), burdock (gobo). The trick with sushi is to roll it so all the ingredients end up in the middle of the rice and nori. Believe me, it takes practice!
Inari Sushi is made from aburage (deep fried tofu) bags that are filled with seasoned rice. Chopped pickled vegetables are sometimes added to the seasoned rice but we’ve found that everyone just likes the plain ones the best. These were made by my mother and Sachiko, Mary's mother-in-law.

My mother, Fumi, who is 90 years old, sliced Tuna & Albacore Sashimi that my brother Roger caught off the coast of California and in Baja California last month and froze just for this occasion. According to my mom, the sashimi must be trimmed so she gets these nice rectangular shaped slices and she cuts each slice with ONE long stroke. No sawing motion. The knife must be an extremely sharp sashimi knife. It’s a special knife with a very long, 10" narrow blade used for only one purpose.

She also made a Tsunomono Salad, my New Years favorite, made out of seaweed (wakame), cucumbers, nagaimo, a type yam that is very crunchy, with a rice vinegar dressing. Nagaimo is a very strange vegetable because it exudes a slimy goop when sliced so you have to rinse it before adding slices to the salad. It tastes like jicima. I forgot to take a photo of it though...sorry.

The Chinese Roast Duck was purchased from Marina Foods on De Anze Blvd. Their ducks are less salty than other places (like Ranch 99). It’s important to have fowl on the table so we always serve duck and chicken.






Glenn always BBQ’s Chicken Teriyaki to perfection. He must get a lot of practice because his chicken always turns out tender and juicy. Mine is always a hit and miss thing because I rarely make Chicken Teriyaki anymore. These were boned and sliced.

Tempura Patties were made my Auntie Dorothy. They were delicious but I couldn’t tell you what was in them. They are like the fish cakes you have to buy at the Japanese grocery stores but better!


Someone brought Lumpia, a Filipino dish that most people are familiar with but if you have never eaten homemade lumpia, you are missing a very delicious treat. It's a wrapper that is filled with pork or chicken and several grated vegetables and soy based seasonings and then fried. Usually served with a dipping sauce. I don't know who brought it...it just showed up on the table. That's a problem with pot lucks...as well as a surprise treat...food just keep showing up so you have to keep going back to the table in case you missed a dish that was brought in since you last visited it...what a great excuse to graze all day long!



Salmon Rice is a dish that Mary and I created after tasting it at the Gochi restaurant in Sunnyvale. We steam rice and just after the rice is cooked, we add the chopped salmon, salmon roe and Furimaki, a flaked seaweed seasoning. This year we tried Ebi Furimake (shrimp flavored) and it was perfect! The hot rice cooks the salmon and heats up the roe without cooking it. It’s become a family favorite!



The Char Sui (Chinese BBQ Pork) was marinated from a jar according to Mary and BBQ'd by Glenn. It was made out of boneless country style pork rib and was 10 times better than any Char Sui I would buy from any Chinese deli! It was tender, moist and marinated just enough so it wasn't overly sweet.


Mary made a Tofu Spinach Saladthat had grated carrots in it. It's one of her favorite salads and we decided that our table needed some more "green" food. This dish and the Edamame Salad weren’t big sellers though…too healthy, I guess, for our family!




It is important to serve seafood on this day so along with the Sashimi, I purchased Seafood Chow Fun from our favorite Chinese Restaurant, Pan Tao, near the corner of Homestead and Wolf Road. Chow fun, I discovered, while absolutely fabulous at the restaurant is not a dish that is good sitting on a buffet table and hour later. The chow fun noodle dries up and the fish, squid, shrimp and scallops get cold. Oh well, a good idea gone bad...


Sachiko makes Oden (a Japanese soup with prepared fish cakes) every year. I love this soup. It’s different than the Ozone Soup which is the first thing we’re supposed to eat on New Years Day. Ozone soup is made with a fish base called “Dashi” and has cut up taro root, shitake mushrooms, prepared fish cakes, sliced daikon, and seaweed. It is served over a rice cake (mochi) and is very hardy breakfast! Oden, on the other hand is made with several varieties of fish cakes, tempura, seaweed, hard boiled eggs, daikon, konnyaku in a dashi based broth. It is sweeter than Ozone and doesn’t have a rice cake at the bottom nor any vegetables.

My brother Roger makes the Potato Salad every year. It is a simple potato salad with dill pickles instead of sweet pickle relish that I use in my salad. It is much healthier for diabetics with this substitution! We all look forward to his Potato Salad…he’s getting famous for this dish! The Marinated Lotus Root is a dish that was brought by someone but I don’t know who. Lotus root is a crunchy, slightly starchy root that takes on flavors of whatever it’s marinated in. I made some Pickled Daikon flavored with Matcha, sugared ginger, salt, and rice vinegar. It was a dish that was on Eric Gower’s blog that intrigued me. I like to make it with green daikon because of the pretty color but I couldn’t find any this time of the year.

My cousin Christy made a Hawaiian Poke Salad. It’s a salad of chunks of raw tuna mixed with soy, seaweed, sesame seed oil, and sesame seeds. It was delicious and everyone gobbled it up! I didn't get a photo of this dish either but let me assure you, it was yummy!

I make the Mochi Cake (rice flour custard cake) every year. It is made with rice flour, whole milk, sugar, butter, vanilla extract and baking powder. It is sooo good but I only make it once a year because it’s a heart attack on a plate. I cut it into small squares and put it in paper cupcake holders to reduce the intake.



Christy makes Finger Jello every year and the kids really like this one. It’s jello with cocktail fruit inside…I don’t know how she makes it pink…maybe with maraschino cherry juice and milk? It’s a light dessert that is also refreshing.






My other cousin Lori made this gourmet Pumpkin Cheesecake. If you love pumpkin, this cheesecake is to die for! We sliced it thinly, because it’s so rich!






Jackie prepared Banana Pudding with Meringue topping. It’s like a banana cream pie without the crust. Jackie and Alvin are adopted family for us and she always brings a different fabulous dessert each year. This one was no exception. Another rich dessert that no one avoided. It was gone by the end of the day!



Besides her Fried Won Tons, Maxine is also famous for her Butterscotch Cookies. They are my Christmas gift from her every year and I freeze them so I can enjoy them all year long…only taking one at a time to make them last 12 months.




My cousin Randy makes a Bundt Cake with Rum, Brandy and Bourbon. It’s a cake that his father-in-law, my Uncle Tak, made every year before he passed away. Randy thinks that it’s missing something but we all think it tastes great. It’s boozy but not unpleasantly so...in fact, I really like the mixture of the 3 liquors! It adds complexity to the bundt cake.

I also made Walnut Baklava that I forgot to take a photo of…I’m still working on this recipe. How much butter to spread on each layer of filo and the thickness of the syrup that’s poured over the baked baklava is something that takes practice. I am also tinkering around with how much honey to put in the syrup…I don’t think I like the honey taste to be that prominent and I’m thinking of caramelizing the syrup next time.

You can see why I had to learn how to cook with a family like mine. I remember my mom trying various gourmet dishes and as a child we all went "eewww!" but she made Cherries Flambeau one time, roasted a Goose for Christmas, etc. All of my aunts are also great cooks and I have many of their recipes...lucky me! But you can see that I have a heritage that I MUST live up to!

After watching the Rose Bowl Game, we visited some more and everyone waddled home. Every year, I swear I won't eat so much because I am sure I gain at least 2-5 pounds on this one day, but it's the first New Years resolution that gets broken...again!