Food Porn Nation

Chinese NYE is always spent with family/friends gorging on copious amounts of food to ring in the new year. Kind of what I like to think of as a Chinese version of Christmas! You have your traditional items served at dinner to symbolise good luck, good health and prosperity. On the night, you must have chicken and fish, to symbolise prosperity and long uncut noodles as a symbol of longevity/long life.

With a small gathering of four, I thought I would do a quick post of what I served up last night.

Firstly, we tucked into some soy chicken. Chicken should be served whole to symbolise family wholeness and completeness. I bought this soy chicken from Emperor’s Garden BBQ and I think it is one of the best Chinese BBQ places you can find.

The chicken is deliciously salty and sweet. The flesh is tender and moistened with a touch of sweet soy that seeps to the bottom which I tend to reuse for basting.

I managed to prepare 3 kilos of mud crab with a lot of blood sweat and tears. I served it up with egg noodles and a ginger and shallot sauce.This was my first time serving it up and I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised on the results, that I just have to share the recipe! Click here to take a look. I just loved how the noodles slurp up the sauce!

Lastly, I steamed a whole snapper with ginger and shallot sauce which is a very popular and traditional way of serving fish. Eating fish symbolises abundance and excess for the year (年年有餘, niánnián yǒu yú) and again must be served whole from head to tail to signify a good start and finish for the year ahead.

I wonder, if you could feast on anything for CNYE what would you feast on? Perhaps Peking duck or sucking pig? Or if you celebrate CNYE. How did you celebrate and what did you eat? 🙂

Welcome to the Year of the Snake 2013, Kung Hei Fat Choi!