Chinese new year. It’s the year of the sheep – certainly a more auspicious culinarily proposition than the horse it succeeds, and a good excuse, if any were needed in this dark, damp month, for a bit of a feast. And hurrah for any feast that involves mandatory dumplings – in northern China, you leave them out of the New Year’s Eve feast at your peril, because their shape, resembling the ingots once used as currency, brings wealth in the months ahead.Thursday being New Year’s Day, the multitude will already have had their lucky fill of the things, but frankly, I imagine they need no tutelage on the subject in any case. Instead, this piece is dedicated to the novice dumpling cooks – people like me, who’ll seize on any excuse to steam a whole fish in the name of abundance, eat their height in noodles in the hope of a long life, and joyfully neglect the cleaning for fear of sweeping away their good fortune for the year. All hail the sheep!
