Count it as one of the joys of a mixed-race marriage. We bring some really different cultural perspectives into our lives. One spouse’s important cultural tradition is … well, the same day as the other person’s important cultural tradition. Fortunately, Chinese New Year is determined by the lunar calendar, meaning it’s a moving target — in mid-January one year, late February other years.

This year, Chinese New Year begins on Feb. 3, meaning the Packers and the Steelers will have to face another contender: the Rabbit. As in, Year of the Rabbit.

I set out to create a dish that would spice up the standard Super Bowl chili with some Asian flavors. Chili, with its ground meat and spicy red sauce, has always reminded me of a couple homegrown Chinese dishes: ma pa tofu (with its ground pork, cubes of bean curd, and hot bean sauce) and lo ba bung. What is lo ba bung? It’s a dish rarely served in restaurants, but commonly made at home — Taiwanese comfort food. Minced or ground pork is simmered with soy sauce, rice wine and five-spice, making a simple, hearty meal. Sort of like chili.

Chinese New Year Chili

Serves 4-6

Notes:

* Five-spice powder is made of fennel, anise, ginger, cinnamon and cloves. You can also substitute 1-2 pieces of star anise, a cinnamon stick and a dash of the other spices.

** Bean paste is found in Chinese specialty markets. It lends a nice, earthy touch to the dish. But if you can’t find it, use some regular Chinese chili sauce (the kind found in glass jars at restaurants) or Sriracha. They won’t add the complexity of the hot bean paste, but they will add heat.

Notes:

* Five-spice powder is made of fennel, anise, ginger, cinnamon and cloves. You can also substitute 1-2 pieces of star anise, a cinnamon stick and a dash of the other spices.

** Bean paste is found in Chinese specialty markets. It lends a nice, earthy touch to the dish. But if you can’t find it, use some regular Chinese chili sauce (the kind found in glass jars at restaurants) or Sriracha. They won’t add the complexity of the hot bean paste, but they will add heat.

Having read the book in its entirety now, I can say those acts are not the disturbing part to me. Some of my Asian American peers tell similar stories of immigrant tough-love. And to be honest, that straight-talking philosophy is something I value, and struggle with daily in raising my own young children. Do I say “Good job!” when my son hastily scrawls his third-grade report, or do I insist that he re-copy his sentences in the neat handwriting he is capable of? Do I high-five my son after a soccer match he daydreamed through, or do I tell him he needs focus on the game? Do I let my kids drop out of Chinese school because it is boring? My own Taiwanese-born mother always told me that people who say “just trying your best is good enough” don’t care to help you succeed to your true potential. Like Chua, my mother started me on classical piano before I was in kindergarten. (Unlike Chua’s daughters, I only lasted a few months with the exclusive instructor I was sent to at age 10.)

No, what disturbs me most is that Chua — who was raised in America, amongst the professors at Berkeley, during the Marlo Thomas “Free to Be You and Me” years — would so earnestly believe in this parenting style, and continue to cling to it for nearly the entirety of her daughters’ childhoods. Even when her own immigrant parents beg her to stop. Consider this snippet:

“You can’t do what Daddy and I did,” my mother replied. “Things are different now. Lulu’s not you — and she’s not Sophia. She has a different personality, and you can’t force her.”

Throughout the entire book, Chua seems to reiterate the stubborn sentiment that “If it worked for me — and look how successful I turned out — it’s good enough for my daughters.” There is little ambivalence or introspection about her ways until very late in the story (and her daughters’ childhoods). After her willful daughter Lulu, 13, throws a public fit during a family vacation to Russia, Chua finally backs down, letting her quit the violin. She purports to have a new hybrid philosophy that blends the best of both worlds, but in the closing pages, she is unyielding and back to her old ways: “I refuse to buckle to politically correct Western social norms that are obviously stupid,” she writes.

The book is engaging and a quick read, but I’m saddened that it has been blown up into a symbol of the East-West culture clash. Although it touches on parenting struggles important to second-generation Asian Americans raising the third generation, it does little to further a sincere discussion.

Just remember, as the book cover reads: “This is a story about a mother, two daughter, and two dogs.”

Luckily, the scarcity of grocery stores was balanced by an overabundance of restaurants. I happened to wait tables at one of them, a new Italian eatery owned by a well-known jazz musician. But sometimes, a large crowd coincided with a large snowfall, stranding lots of (hungry) people and depleting the restaurant’s cold storage.

“Carpaccio? Sorry we’re out of that.”

“Veal? We ran out of that, too.”

On a particularly busy night, the manager sent someone to the aforementioned grocery store to buy supplies, only to come back with about half of what was needed. A customer asked me for Parmesan cheese, and when I went to retrieve it from the kitchen, a frazzled cook thrust a ramekin of mozzarella in my hands.

Shouting over the kitchen din, I clarified, “Parmesan cheese!” The cook just shrugged.

There was one dish the restaurant never ran out of: pasta puttanesca. With a sauce made from tomatoes, garlic, anchovies, capers and olives, the recipe was rumored to have originated from Italian ladies of the night, who could prepare it easily from provisions in a typical cupboard.

Although the San Francisco Bay Area has not in recorded history been snowed under, I can still easily cook up a pot of spaghetti puttanesca from the items already in my cabinet.

Spaghetti Puttanesca