Taste of Prosperity: Iconic Dishes for Chinese New Year Celebrations
© Gail Zohar
Written by Gail Zohar, Terroir Program Director Asia, follow her on instagram.
Chinese New Year or Spring Festival, is the most important holiday of the year to Chinese communities around the world. China, being an ancient agrarian society, follows a lunar calendar, according to which the first day of the first moon usually falls somewhere between late January and mid-February on the Gregorian calendar.Above all, Chinese New Year is a time for family reunion.
Factories, universities and markets around China shut down ten days before the holiday so that everyone can make it home on time for the new year celebration. The last day of the lunar year, or New Year's Eve, is a night for families to reunite and feast, ushering in the new year. This is when the New Year's Eve dinner take place. Though traditions change across China, from north to south, based on culture, weather and ingredients, some elements of the new year dinner prevail throughout the country. We will introduce some of the must-have items that you will find on almost every family's table during Chinese New Year dinner.
© Gail Zohar
DUMPLINGS
Dumplings are the absolute rulers of Chinese New Year dinner.
Even though the dumplings are not actually eaten during the dinner itself, but after, they are still considered the most festive and important new year dish. Like all essential dishes on the holiday dinner table, the dumplings have a symbolic meaning and are not there just for being delicious.
The shape of dumplings resemble gold ingots (a traditional Chinese form of currency), and during the Chinese spring festival one of the main wishes is for prosperity and riches in the new coming year. There is even a tradition of placing a gold coin inside one of the many dumplings a family prepares and the lucky family member who finds the gold coin will be blessed with extra great riches in the coming year. (Some dentists get rich too thanks to this custom).
Dumplings in northern China are made with wheat wrappers and boiled, while southern dumplings are made with rice flour and steamed. This is a condition of agriculture – wheat is cultivated in northern China and rice paddies in the south.
As for the filing, this is not so much a question of geography, but of family tradition. Every family has its own favorite recipe that is passed down through generations and is often the subject of minor arguments with neighbors and the occasional new daughter in law – who makes it best?
So, when do we eat dumplings?
The dumplings are the only dish that is not prepared in advance for the Chinese New Year feast, as it's meant to be made together by the entire family.
After the new year dinner, the family will sit together, chat, drink tea, eat mandarin oranges (that are considered auspicious and are essential fixtures on the holiday table), and start making the dumplings together having them ready to eat at exactly midnight when the new year begins and the fireworks are set.
© Gail Zohar
FISH
No matter where you are in China, a whole fish, steamed, fried, boiled or braised will always be on the holiday table during Chinese New Year dinner. Fish symbolise riches, abundance and prosperity in Chinese culture and the word for fish - Yú 鱼, is a word that means excess, surplus and plenty - Yú 余, making it super, extra meaningful.
Similar plays on words, characters and homophones are very common in Chinese culture and you will find many dishes on each holiday table that are there for symbolic reasons, other than just being tasty.
There’s a lot of etiquette when it comes to eating fish in China, (who eats first, who eats what part, which direction the fish head should be facing and what to do when one side of the fish has been eaten and you need to get to the other side...), but we’ll save this for another article.
For now, don’t forget to admire the fish your host is serving during Chinese New Year dinner, and join the family in wishing everyone “Nián Nián Yǒu Yú 年年有余” when eating it, meaning: let there be surplus every year. its land, people, and traditions.
© Gail Zohar
NEW YEAR CAKES
Don’t let the name mislead you, these guys do not even remotely resemble the western definition of a “cake”. There will be no crumbs, no frosting and probably not even sugar.
Chinese New Year Cakes are basically blocks of super dense, super chewy glutinous rice flour dough sliced to pieces and stir-fried with different condiments.
It is usually a savory dish that is undoubtedly an acquired taste.
In ancient times, when meat was a luxury, this was a good substitute as the glutinous rice is filling and when stir-fried with soy sauce, oyster sauce or lard can really resemble meat in flavor.
The reason this dish is still starring in CNY dinners is mostly due to its name - Nián Gāo 年糕 (year-cake), which, you guessed it, is a homophone for something else - Nián Gāo 年高 (year –high), which means that by eating the New Year Cakes we are wishing ourselves and our loved ones a better new year where we will climb up the ladder to reach higher peaks, higher titles and greater accomplishments.
A very popular gift on Chinese New Year is a fancy box with two beautiful New Year Cakes shaped like gold fish. This confectionary artistry is not necessarily meant to be eaten but more of a symbolic auspicious gift. If you combine everything we have learned thus far, you can easily understand what the giver is wishing the receiver: a blessed new year of ascending up the ladder and having great prosperity and excess.
© Gail Zohar
SPRING ROLLS
Chinese New Year is also called Spring Festival as it is almost the end of winter and a time for farmers to wish for an early spring with good weather and sufficient rain to start a new sawing cycle.
Spring Rolls got their name for being eaten during the Spring Festival dinner, (they are not to be confused with Spring Crapes, which are eaten on the first day of spring).
Delicate, paper-thin sheets of wheat or rice flour are filled with everything from sweet red-bean paste to shredded vegetables, minced meat, shrimps, mushrooms or vermicelli noodles, every family has its favorite recipe. But the most important thing is that they are rolled neatly and tightly and are gently fried to a perfect golden color absolutely uniform. The spring rolls are then stacked on top of each other and served as a little golden pyramid symbolizing a stack of gold bars, expressing, once more, wishes for wealth and prosperity in the coming year.
© Gail Zohar
CHINESE CABBAGE
Can you believe that cabbage is the most common vegetable in China on the festive holiday table?
Well, absolutely yes!
Chinese cabbage has earned its place on the menu of the most festive feast of the year as it is the most essential vegetable that keeps most of China nourished during the harsh winter months.
As the ground freezes and no leafy greens grow for nearly six months the Chinese cabbage, stacked and preserved in the beginning of each winter, has been a source of vitamins and fiber throughout the cold season in the Middle Kingdom for thousands of years.
It is celebrated with hundreds of different recipes across the country by every Chinese province and ethnic group.
And of course, there’s an auspicious game of words to justify the Chinese cabbage presence on the New Year’s Eve tables: the word Bái Cài 白菜 (Chinese Cabbage) sounds a lot like the word Bǎi Cái 百财 which means “a hundred riches” or “hundreds of fortunes”.
So yes, the cheapest and most common winter vegetable, is actually the plant of millionaires.
© Gail Zohar
YUAN XIAO (STUFFED GLUTINOUS RICE BALLS)
The 15th day of the first lunar month sees the first full moon of the new lunar year. This is the second most important holiday of the Chinese New Year celebration. It is also known as the Lantern Festival.
This day has a bitter sweet feeling as a month of celebration and togetherness is coming to an end. Families will soon have to say goodbye as students will travel back to universities, workers will travel to far away cities to work in offices and factories and elderly parents will be left behind pining for the next family reunion.
But while we are still together, we will sit around the table one more time for a great big feast, we will light colorful lanterns and send them up to the sky adorned with our most auspicious blessings and new year wishes, and enjoy the bright light of a perfectly round full moon reminding us of the round family table and the Chinese phrase - Tuántuán Yuányuán 团团圆圆 - which means reunion and wholesomeness.
The Yuan Xiao, or the stuffed glutinous rice ball, represents all of this.
Smooth, round and white, they resemble the full moon and the filling, mostly sweet, oozing from the soft, silky dumpling is meant to leave a sweet taste of the love of family and friends at the end of the holiday season.
The most traditional Yuan Xiao filling is black sesame paste which is fragrant and rich. Other classic options include a mix of nuts and fruit jam, shredded peanuts with brown sugar, osmanthus (slightly bitter and mildly sweet edible flower) syrup and hawthorn fruit paste.
In recent years some big Chinese food brands have introduced more trendy, globalized (and some say outrageous) new fillings like chocolate, rose petals, vanilla, mango and even durian, all to boost sales. The jury is still out on whether it is a blasphemous abomination or a way to appeal to a younger audience, but the most important thing is that there’s something for everyone and the meaning of the dish and the holiday remain unchanged.
Happy Chinese New Year, Gōngxǐfācái恭喜发财 !
© Gail Zohar