Every year on New Year’s Eve, we have a tradition of our “Around the World” dinner. This was born of the need to celebrate the new year before midnight when our children were really small. We talk about different countries who have already celebrated the new year and eat food from said countries while listening to music from them on Spotify. This year, we almost considered breaking tradition and skipping the dinner, but just almost. Traditions are important to kiddos and the fact we would be arriving home around 4:30 in the afternoon of New Year’s Eve after three days of traveling to Kelowna, B.C. to ski was not adequate reason for skipping the five-course dinner as far as any of them were concerned. What to do?
What to do is to keep it as simple as possible. I froze our Christmas dinner leftovers, which consisted of a really yummy Eretrian (East Africa) dish called zigni, for use again on New Year’s Eve and mixed up some injera batter before we left. I planned a very simple appetizer to mimic those wonderful baked mussels that are found in American Japanese restaurants, although I am not absolutely certain that they are authentically Japanese. I added a simple egg drop soup to represent China, an almost equally simple salad from Indonesia (see next post), and American ice cream sundaes (no baking!) for dessert, and we were set. The tradition lived on, the kiddos felt secure in that, and we all enjoyed a good dinner after a long day of all sorts of traveling excitement, which included getting stuck in a snowbank (from which we extracted ourselves after much digging and lots of help from some awesome Canadians)!
- 2 Tablespoons mayonnaise
- 2 Tablespoons finely grated sharp cheddar cheese
- 1/2 teaspoon soy sauce
- 1 teaspoon siracha sauce
- 1/4 teaspoon yuzu sauce (optional but so nice)
Whisk together in a small bowl.
- 1 tin of smoked mussels
- Small rice crackers.
Use a fork to gently remove the mussels from the tin and place them on a napkin or bit of paper towel to drain. Remove any residual beards (these are kind of frizzy looking black things that may be attached to some of the mussels). Place the mussels on the crackers and top each one with about 1/2 teaspoon of the sauce. Preheat the broiler. Broil mussels for a couple of minutes until the sauce is golden brown.
- 1 green onion
Thinly slice the green onion and scatter over the top of the mussels before serving.
