Chinese New Year/Tet for 2011: what are you cooking?

[Chris Amirault]

Just getting started thinking about this in our household, and I'm not sure at all what we'll be doing. Anyone got plans?

[Kouign Aman]

I havent done any research - what is traditional?

I should go buy some small tangerines or kumquats I guess (gold, round = money).

What else?

[Doodad]

Not so much cooking as going out. We finally have a Vietnamese restaurant very close by and it is their grand opening. We want to support them.

[nakji]

I think spring rolls are a must, aren't they?

My husband is going to Vietnam for Tet for another motorcycle trip. I'm staying in China for a while, then we're meeting up after the main holiday in Singapore. I've been toying, toying with the idea of throwing a full-on New Year's table for all my foreign friends stuck in town over the holidays. Barbara Tropp just got indexed over on EYB, so that would help me navigate the menu planning process. My plan B is to get invited over to a Chinese friend's place for a family meal.

[Kent Wang]

This will be my first Chinese New Year in China since I was five or six. Most Chinese, including my family, will be going to a restaurant.

[Kouign Aman]

I asked the lovely young Taiwanese lady who is staying with us what we should have and she was emphatically in favor of hotpot. I have no idea if its traditional, but I do know she's been missing it, so its all good.

My husband says I may not cut a hole in the table to lower the crockpot, so perhaps we will all sit on cushions for the extra height.

[nakji]

I often do hotpot on the coffee table, a leftover habit from when I lived in Japan. I have a low-profile hotpot plate and pan that makes it easy to reach in, but you could sit people around on proper chairs so you're able to see in the pot.

The great thing about hotpot is the minimal prep and festive atmosphere - the bad thing is the clean-up! You should get everyone to wear aprons to avoid the splash back.

[HowardLi]

Also, it takes a long time to cook. You'd think that boiling water cooks food fast (it does) but when cold food drops the temp, oh man... make sure you have enough appetizers to go around.

[nakji]

Oh yeah, sides...you've got to have a lot of sides...

I like some sort of salad with creamy sesame dressing; pickles or kimchi; fried potatoes with garlic salt; fried chili peanuts....

[Darienne]

Twice DH and I have been to a Chinese New Year at the home of a friend who is married to a Chinese man originally from Hong Kong. Besides all kinds of candies in red containers, the dinner was multi-coursed, with one dish being removed for another. I seem to recall: Lion Head meatballs, some kind of spare ribs, an entire fish (you are supposed to serve it with head, tail, etc),rice...can't recall the other dishes, only that there were several. Dessert was Eight Treasure Glutinous Rice Cake. All in all, it was an incredible feast.

[Chris Amirault]

Does anyone know how to make the Chinese red bean and coconut sweet gelatin? My wife loves it....

The more I think about it, the more I'm leaning Vietnamese this year. Kinda had a big Chinese meal last year around this time.

[YSL]

I'll be cooking for my family who are coming over for Chinese New Year. It'll be 8 courses (dishes) including some tradtional Hakka dishes

[Chris Amirault]

Such as what? And how many in the family?

[YSL]

There will be 8 - 12 people. Dishes will include:

Braised (dried) oysters with black sea moss

Steamed whole fish

Pork belly and taro

Salt baked chicken

Eight treasure duck

stuffed tofu and bitter melon

Roast suckling pig

[Will]

Does anyone know how to make the Chinese red bean and coconut sweet gelatin? My wife loves it....

The more I think about it, the more I'm leaning Vietnamese this year. Kinda had a big Chinese meal last year around this time.

I haven't had the exact thing you're talking about, but my girlfriend's mom makes a coconut milk and mung bean dessert which sounds similar (I think she got the method from a co-worker). I think you just put the (cooked) beans in a dish and pour a (heated) mixture of coconut milk, rock sugar to taste, and a pinch or two of salt, with a small amount of agar dissolved (I don't think it matters if you use the powdered kind or the stick kind, but the powdered kind is very potent). Then put it in the fridge to set. If you want a more precise recipe, there are some online if you search for 'red bean coconut agar'. Using too much agar will result in an unbelievably dense final product.

[Yung-i]

Despite the fact that I'll be spending it by myself this year, I should buy some ingredients for some sort of scaled-down hot pot...meat, seafood, tofu, assorted fishcakes and cabbage and the like.

Either that or I'll be eating store bought Wei-Chuan dumplings and dreaming of my folks and the jong zi they usually make. ;_;

[Kouign Aman]

Coffee table - could do.

Sides - thanks for the suggestion. Fried potatoes in any shape go over well.

Maybe I will live dangerously and bring the food to room temp before we start.

Aprons! Oh my! Art smocks it is.

[nakji]

Is anyone doing noodles? This piece in the NY Times made me think of it.

[Big Joe the Pro]

Here in Beijing boiled dumplings seem to be traditional

[Prawncrackers]

There will be 8 - 12 people. Dishes will include:

Braised (dried) oysters with black sea moss

Steamed whole fish

Pork belly and taro

Salt baked chicken

Eight treasure duck

stuffed tofu and bitter melon

Roast suckling pig

That sounds like dinner at my mum's place too, we are also Hakka folk. We'll have a dish with fat choy (black moss) of course, dried oysters, sea cucumber and maybe some fish maw. The fish at the market was disppointing yesterday but i've prepared the traders for next Weds! I'm not cooking this year, my mother will be and i've specifically requested Kau Yuk (pork belly and taro) as it's one mt favourites. For such a simple looking dish it's actually a little labour intensive and she seems to cook it once a year. We always have poached chicken and we will probably buy a roast duck. As for the suckling pig, wow, are you cooking that at home or buying it in (peach garden)? I always promise myself that one day when I have an oven big enough the first thing I will cook in it will be a suckling pig, oink!

[YSL]

The suckling pig was the one thing that was bought in (yes, from Peach Garden), my oven is nowhere near big enough to cope!

I agree with you about Kau Yuk (pork belly and taro) being deceptively labour intensive, but the results are worth it! I was particularly proud of the Eight Treasure Duck (Bat Bo Ahp)which again was labour intensive, but very tasty and enjoyed by all. I ended up cooking a fish maw dish (with pig's liver) too which brought the total to 9 dishes.

I think it wouldn't really be a CNY meal if there wasn't some sort of effort put into the dishes

Will post pictures later

Edited January 30, 2011 by YSL (log)

[nakji]

I'm having friends over, so I think it'll have to be hotpot. That's all I'm competent to put out for a crowd.

[YSL]

Photos are up, you can view them here

[Prawncrackers]

Very nice thanks for sharing, those are exactly the home cooked dishes that I grew up eating. I'll post up some of my mum's New Year dishes later in the week so we can compare!

[YSL]

Thanks for the nice comment about my photos

I don't think I can compare to your Mother's cooking but I wanted to do some traditional hakka dishes - Especially ones I remembered eating when younger. That said, the one dish I didn't do this year which I have done so in previous years was (what I call) Hakka Pork (Jiuew Yuk Baht) which is basically pork (shoulder) steamed with lots of black beans and dried orange peel. It was either that or Kau Yuk and after asking the rest of my family, they all preferred Kau Yuk.

I look forward to seeing your pictures later this week