Chinese food and celebrations

[Dejah]

We are familiar with the multi-course meals at weddings. What about for birthdays,

baby's "full month shaving head" celebrations, or any other special occaisions? Does your family observe any special rules for the food served?

My Mom always required: "sam sang". . . chicken, pork, seafood, plus rice, some kind of "tsee" (Chinese pastry), and fruit. There must be 6, 9 or 12 dishes.

For the baby's special day, did your family have a banquet? Were there pink eggs, new mother's soup? Was this banquet oly for baby boys, as was the old tradition?

[hzrt8w]

It's been a while since I had been to a formal Chinese banquet. The banquets in Hong Kong is more conformed to the Chinese traditions than the banquets in the USA. The format is about the same, whether the occassion is for wedding, baby first-month, or birthday.

[Note: my memory is rusty, the following may be wrong. Feel free to correct me]

The formal banquet features 8 courses:

The first course is appertizer. e.g. Roasted suckling pigs, hams, BBQ pork, jelly fish, etc..

The second course is soup.

The third course is usually "the best stuff", e.g. abalone and black mushrooms.

The four and fifth one is up to the hosts.

The sixth one is fish.

The seventh one is fried chicken.

The eighth one is fried rice or fried noodles.

At last, they will bring out the dessert buns for birthdays or some sweets. In the event of a baby's first-month, then red eggs. And fruits (e.g. oranges)

The banquets in the USA no longer follow these traditions.

There are also traditions for meals during Chinese New Year.

- First day (Lunar New Year): must slaughter a chicken. So there must be a chicken dish.

- Third day: supposedly you should not visit your relatives on this day, or else you will get into quarrels. This is a vegetarian day.

[Transparent]

It's been a while since I had been to a formal Chinese banquet.  The banquets in Hong Kong is more conformed to the Chinese traditions than the banquets in the USA.  The format is about the same, whether the occassion is for wedding, baby first-month, or birthday.

[Note:  my memory is rusty, the following may be wrong.  Feel free to correct me]

The formal banquet features 8 courses:

The first course is appertizer.  e.g. Roasted suckling pigs, hams, BBQ pork, jelly fish, etc..

The second course is soup.

The third course is usually "the best stuff", e.g. abalone and black mushrooms.

The four and fifth one is up to the hosts.

The sixth one is fish.

The seventh one is fried chicken.

The eighth one is fried rice or fried noodles.

At last, they will bring out the dessert buns for birthdays or some sweets.  In the event of a baby's first-month, then red eggs.  And fruits (e.g. oranges)

The banquets in the USA no longer follow these traditions.

There are also traditions for meals during Chinese New Year.

- First day (Lunar New Year):  must slaughter a chicken.  So there must be a chicken dish.

- Third day:  supposedly you should not visit your relatives on this day, or else you will get into quarrels.  This is a vegetarian day.

←

That's strange, every banquet I've been to has the exact same 8 courses. The desserts are non-traditional most of the time though, especially with the time-consuming sweets. But that's probably the restaurant being lazy.

[waic]

There's a great book by Elizabeth Luard called Sacred Food in which she looks at foods used for ceremonial purposes throughout the world. There are sections on Chinese celebrations and holidays.

[hzrt8w]

I was off. Just slightly off. Victim of being in the US for over 20 years.

Thanks to instant communications on the Internet, some fellow forum participants helped me find some sample banquet menus.

The first course is appertizer, such as suckling pigs, jelly fish, etc.. The second one is not soup. Rather, the second and third and perhaps forth are hot entres ranging from shrimp, squid, dried scallops, seafood combinations, etc.. The fifth one is typically shark-fin soup. The sixth one is abalone, or other hot entres. The seventh one is always steamed fish. And the eighth one poultry, typically deep-fried chicken. Fried rices or noodles would not count as a course. They do come at the end of the meal to fill up your stomach.

All Chinese banquets pretty much follow this format. Each dish is served one after another, not all together.

The following is one sample banquet menu:

龍 鳳 呈 祥 全包宴(粵)

脆皮乳豬全體 (Barbecued Whole Sucking Pig )

金銀明蝦球 (Sauteed and Deep-fried Prawns )

發財瑤柱脯 (Braised Whole Conpoy with Sea Moss )

百花炸釀蟹拑 (Deep-fried Crab Claws coated with Shrimp mousse )

紅燒菜膽鮑翅 (Braised Supreme Shark's Fin with Cabbage )

花菰炆原隻鮮鮑魚 (Simmered Whole Abalones with Mushrooms and Lettuce )

清蒸大東星斑 (Steamed Red Spotted Garoupa )

富貴脆炸雞 (Deep-fried Crispy Chicken )

美滿鴛鴦飯 (Fried Rice Topped with Tomato and Creamy Sauce )

幸福水餃麵 (Shrimp Dumplings with Noodles in Soup )

濃情蜜意 (Red Bean Soup with Lotus Seeds )

情深款款 (Chinese Petits Fours)

[Pan]

I didn't know what conpoy was, so I looked it up. I also found two definitions of sea moss. I would think the first definition, "[n] any of various red algae having graceful rose to purple fronds (e.g. dulse or carrageen)," is the applicable one.

[hzrt8w]

I didn't know what conpoy was, so I looked it up. I also found two definitions of sea moss. I would think the first definition, "[n]  any of various red algae having graceful rose to purple fronds (e.g. dulse or carrageen)," is the applicable one.

←

Conpoy is dried scallop (US terminology).

Sea moss (don't know why they translated it as that) is "Fat Choy", the fungus that looks like human hair.

[aprilmei]

Fat choi is usually referred to as hairy moss seaweed, even though it's not grown anywhere near the sea. It's harvested in semi-desert areas of northwestern areas of the mainland including Gansu, Tibet and Inner Mongolia. The harvest of it is causing erosion and deforestation because in those areas, there aren't very many plants growing wild. It's actually against the law to harvest it and sell it on the mainland but I saw it being sold openly in Shanghai when I was there last year. It's also still legal to sell it in Hong Kong, despite the efforts of conservation groups. There are newspaper reports about it every year at Lunar New Year, when it's traditionally eaten.

[Dejah]

Fat choi is something that I receive everytime someone comes back from a visit to China.

When I was in business, I always got Fat Choi as a gift. The name sounds like the expression for "prosperity", good for someone in business.

It always made me laugh because CHOI is like my family name. In English is it written as Choi, Choy, Toy, Tsai. But in Chinese characters, they different. I can always blame these gifts for my weight!

There are several FAT CHOYS in my family.

[Hest88]

Here in the Bay Area, the full month party (often referred to in English as a "Red Egg and Ginger" party) is sometimes a formal banquet, but among our friends and relatives it's more often a more casual brunch thing with big pans of noodles, char sui, fried chicken, broccoli beef, etc. The only traditional food items are the red eggs and the ginger.

[herbacidal]

I was off.  Just slightly off.  Victim of being in the US for over 20 years.

Thanks to instant communications on the Internet, some fellow forum participants helped me find some sample banquet menus.

The sixth one is abalone, or other hot entres.  The seventh one is always steamed fish.  And the eighth one poultry, typically deep-fried chicken. 

I'm used to lobster being served either before or after the chicken.

Always stirfried with ginger and scallion, and usually 2 per table.

If they're spending enough on the banquet, they'll serve squab instead of chicken.

[Tepee]

Menu of my father's birthday dinner a fortnight ago. Can you imagine I totally forgot to take pics until the prawn dish (terrible picture, but I'll post it anyway), because I was too busy making sure the girls were eating. Usually DH helps, but I had the choice of sitting with the girls, or sitting at the same table as my MIL.

Anyway, here's the menu.

1. Five mini starter dishes with auspicious sounding names. We left it to the

chef who made an excellent selection. The middle dish was the taro nest. I remember there was a dried oyster dish too. Oh well, mum was too busy...

2. Sharks fin soup with crab meat.

3. Suckling piglet (mudbug, eat your heart out!) with very crispy skin.

4. Steamed pomfret garnished with cilantro and lots of finely shredded deep-fried

ginger.

5. Loh Hon Chai - a vegetarian/vegetable dish which has shiitake mushrooms and

bean curd sheets.

6. Prawns done in 2 styles - one sweet sour and the other creamy.

7. Long-life noodles.

8. A cold soup dessert of creamed water chestnut and peach-shaped baos with lotus

paste filling.

And, my cake.