"Chinese New Year" news and stories

With the Year of the Rabbit right around the corner, it's the perfect time to break out the chopsticks and dive into some delicious Chinese food. But which Asian beers best complement your pile of pot stickers? Here, find beers paired with some of our favorite dishes from KitchenDaily's Chinese New Year menu and other standbys -- General Tso's and wonton soup, anyone?

Black Bass with Chili Sauce and Scallions
The crispy entree's spicy-sweet heat (fans of General Tso's chicken take note!) is best matched with a prickly, thirst-slaking pilsner such as Tsingtao, which boasts a bit of lingering malt sweetness. The low, 4.8 percent ABV means you can easily kick back two or three. Tsingtao would also snuggle up nicely with a hot-and-sour soup.

Pork and Scallion Dumplings
These plump, juicy specimens are best served with a beer that'll cut through the rich and fatty juices. I like the Sapporo Premium Beer, a fizzy and food-friendly Japanese brew that closes light and crisp. Sapporo won't rock your world on its own, but it's a fine addition to a dinner table.

Happy Chinese New Year! We're celebrating with fortune cookies. Made from humble flour, sugar, butter, milk and vanilla, these crunchy cookies and their prophecies can serve as everything from hilarious entertainment to weird compliments to advice on how to play the lottery.

Fortune cookies can predict the mundane or the outrageous, and chances are they're both comical and confusing. Here, the top 10 messages hidden inside:

10. "Good sense is the master of human life."

9. "You are free to invent your life."

8. "You are magnetic in your bearing."

Our list, as collected by Rinkworks.com, continues after the jump.

Each Thursday, we round up a selection of scrumptious links from our friends over at YumSugar. Here's what they've got cooking this week:

• This chicken-and-chile burger will heat up a cold day.
• Woo your paramour with one of these Valentine's Day dishes.
• The Bay Area gets no love from Top Chef Masters.
• Are you smitten with pricey glassware?
• Release your inner tiger with this menu -- Chinese New Year and Valentine's Day share a date this year.
• Twilight takes a bite out of Sweethearts.

• Philadelphia restaurateur Margaret Kuo prepares for the Chinese New Year and offers some recipes for readers to make at home.
• Topping dishes with a poached or fried egg is becoming the hottest restaurant trend out there. Happily, it is an easy trick for home cooks to replicate.
• A review of Rachael Ray's Big Orange Book says that while the images aren't appealing, the recipes are homey and tasty.
• In Table Talk, the new Center City gastropub Slate opens tomorrow and Meme finally got its liquor license.
• Every Saturday morning, the Men's Pea Soup Committee at the American Swedish Historical Museum makes 16 gallons of Swedish pea soup.
  
• Food meets comedy in the new one-man show, Cooking Con Karimi.

Want to celebrate the Year of the Ox in proper fashion? The BBC has a simple guide to the Chinese New Year, which begins today. Traditional foods - which vary greatly depending on the region - include Northern Chinese dumplings resembling gold ingots, said to bring wealth for the coming year; big family meals called "poo choi," in which everyone eats out of the same giant bowl to promote togetherness; Southern Chinese turnip cakes given as a sign of respect and honor; and glutinous rice cakes whose sticky nature is said to help families stick together in the new year.

Plus, there's a link to a bunch of the BBC Food's Chinese recipes - think red-cooked pork belly, ginger fish, stir-fried salt and pepper prawns.