New Year's Improv

For New Year's Day, it's traditional, in my family at least, to have black-eyed peas and cabbage. It's always been said that the black-eyes are for luck and the cabbage is for money in the new year. Back home in New Orleans, we would have a black-eyed peas & rice and a black-eyed pea salad as well as stuffed cabbage casserole. I'm not really fond of stuffed cabbage, whether traditional rolls or in a casserole, so in my house here in Australia, I skip that portion of the meal. The fact that it's more often than not too hot to consider such heavy, long-cooking dishes is a major reason why I skip them as well.

This year I found cans of black-eyed peas so the salad was easy enough to do, and without heating the kitchen. Bonus!

I was stuck on how to get the cabbage element in the meal, when I thought SPRING ROLLS! They'll work if I go the easy, prepared frozen route, I'll have to turn on the oven, but it won't be for too terribly long. Yep, I cheated. I used frozen spring rolls for my New Year's cabbage.

But that left me with a new problem. I like to have duck sauce or sweet & sour sauce to accompany my spring rolls. Dearest prefers black bean sauce. I knew we had a jar of black bean sauce in the fridge, but I also knew we were out of sweet & sour sauce. What was I going to do?

That was when I remembered that a quick sweet & sour sauce can be made with pineapple juice and ketchup. It's not authentic, but it works in a pinch. Well, I didn't have pineapple juice and thought if I was going to go to the store for that, I might as well just get a jar of duck sauce. So I needed to improvise with what I had on hand. Working with that as a base, and trying to keep those basic sweet & sour flavors, I settled on honey and ketchup.

I didn't want to do serious cooking, so I squeezed a bit of honey in a custard cup, tossed in a healthy pinch of chili flakes and popped it in the microwave for 30 seconds. I stirred down the boiling syrup and then squeezed in some ketchup. After stirring and allowing to cool for a few seconds, I tasted. It was really very nice and perfect for drizzling over the oven-crisped spring rolls.

So it may not have been conventional, but I did get the traditionally required elements in my New Year's Day dinner and a sweet & sour drizzle, all without heating up my kitchen. New Year's Day Win!

Quick & Easy Sweet & Sour Sauce
2½ teaspoons honey
⅛ teaspoon chili flake
2 to 2½ teaspoons ketchup

In small bowl, mix honey and chili flake.
Heat on high in microwave for 30 seconds.
Remove carefully -- it will be hot!
Stir for about 30 seconds.
Add ketchup and stir well.
Drizzle over spring rolls or use as a dipping sauce.

Makes 1 generous serving