A few weekends ago, the kitchen counter was in a glorious state of disarray, with friends helping to fold filling into potstickers, stir vegetables into fried rice, and make fortune cookies at our combined celebration of Ben’s birthday and the Chinese New Year.

In the below episode, we make crispy tuile cookies with pinched ends folded over fortunes from a Gale Gand recipe. Spread thinly, baked, and twisted while warm and pliable, the cooled cookies shatter when opened, harbingers of a new year of discovery and surprise.

watch this episode in HD on Vimeo
fortune cookie wallpaper on Flickr
drink pairing: Prosecco

(Photos and more video from the party after the jump.)

Perfect dinner party food, fried rice with snow pea, bell pepper, and bok choy goodness stretches to feed a crowd,

fueling Dana’s expert cracking of the mackerel’s salt crust

that left a circular indentation emblematic of this holiday of wholeness.

Later, Eric swiped whipped cream, Ben asked Jordan to be a “serving Myrmidon,” Jordan railed on Obama (yes, he can), I sang off-key, and guests wondered why there was a video camera set up in the kitchen:

Jordan helped me pass Ben’s birthday cake (Martha Stewart’s honey cake with caramelized pears recipe),

Stewart serenaded us in a skeleton shirt,

Mica reprised her role making fortune cookie batches and burning her fingertips with Ashley and Wesley, and then she smiled with Ashley at their handiwork,

Opened fortunes promised that personalized songs, indecent proposals, and true love were in our futures.

And we cleaned the kitchen when the last guests left around four, readying for a Sunday spent musing about parties and pork,

indulging in Nigella’s fantastic croissant pudding (even her recipe notes make for good reading),

eggs and bacon,

and prepping the rest of the pork and napa cabbage potstickers to be dipped in scallion sauce.

Beside the kitchen, the conversation meandered, reconstructing party interactions as I crimped the wrapper edges of the ravs, deciding that potstickers, with crunchy outer casing enveloping soft, savory filling, were both good sustenance and, as Ben suggested, a culinary analog for the epistemic shifts in the year 4706 ahead…

1. John J.:
   February 24th, 2008 at 10:26 pm

   As always, your posts are a treat. Happy Chinese new year!

2. Jordan:
   February 26th, 2008 at 3:55 pm

   it was a really lovely time, but I would like to add the caveat that my comments about Obama and plagiarism predated the “just words” plagiarism flap. Moreover, I think I was joking that he had plagiarized hope from his Sect. of Our Interiors Oprah, so add an /irony tag on the end there.

3. Kristen:
   February 26th, 2008 at 5:31 pm

   Thanks, John! Hope you can join the merriment one of these Chinese New Years—

   Of course, Jordan. Mostly, I just wanted to document you impressively gesticulating with Fresca—thank you again for helping me serve cake—

4. Eric S.:
   March 3rd, 2008 at 6:10 pm

   Thank god I exit the kitchen. I thought the entire video would be of me eating and drinking nonstop.

5. Eric S.:
   March 3rd, 2008 at 6:18 pm

   Wow, I hope I was really drunk because I was acting like a real weirdo.

6. Kristen:
   March 3rd, 2008 at 6:35 pm

   There was quite a bit of footage of you with food—I’m glad I was able to document a few classic Eric S. moves appear here—

7. Zak:
   March 5th, 2008 at 7:19 pm

   Did Jordan actually expose “four sraight men who played up their ambiguous sexuality for their own academic gain?” Really… only four?

8. Kristen:
   March 5th, 2008 at 9:44 pm

   Well, there might have been more, but I think at that point we ran out of Fresca—

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Posted Sunday, February 24th, 2008, 3:12 pm | Filed in Entertaining, Food, Video. Follow responses through the RSS 2.0 feed. Leave a response, or trackback from your own site.