HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR!!!

恭喜發財!!! 祝大家龍馬精神, 身體健康!!!

  

Best wishes to everyone!!! What did you do? How did you celebrate this year?

I was at home for New Years day and also Year's opening (开年).  It is traditional for my family on New Years Day to abstain from eating meat with respect to it being a new year and a new start. Every meal prepared is completely vegan.  Mum always prepares a variety of dishes, including Chinese mushrooms (東菇), satay bamboo shoots, and stir-fried vegetables.

  The most important dish however is the fish!  

Made from potato with black soya beans for eyes it is to be baked in the oven.  This is then always served with a spicy sauce made from tomato and peppers.   Mum used to make it by hand but then she got jealous of all the "professional" ones from HK, so she went out and bought a cast!

On the next day we have 盆菜 (pun choi)!  This is a traditional Hakka stew  that is especially cooked for celebratory events.  Everything is added here: pork, chicken, Chinese mushrooms, duck, prawns, squid, fish balls, Chinese radish and cleaned pork rind.  Everything is individually cooked and then added into a big pot in layers: the radish and the pork rind is added first to the bottom, then the meat, the fish, the duck and chicken and everything else.

In additional to all this, there is also dessert!!! Check these out!

 

紅豆糕, 橙汁年糕, 蘇角, 豆沙角,年年有餘, 和如意吉祥 (no English names for these, sorry!)

So there you go, a very yummy start to the New Year!

May it be a good one :D