Chinese New Year

Last week it was Chinese New Year, aka another excuse to celebrate and take a break. 

Chinese New Year is a special holiday for Asian families. It's like Christmas, but instead of gift giving, red envelopes containing money, are given to children. Also, you sleep with a red envelope of money under your pillow on New Year's eve. Most of it relates to prosperity. 

The colour red, which represents luck, is prevalent. You wear red and / or new clothes. 

New Year is celebrated for 15 days and as with all festivals, lots of eating is involved. Historically I would go to a restaurant with friends to treat ourselves to lobster noodles. Roast duck is also usually involved because the Cantonese style is the perfect mix of salty and sweet. 

What is also fascinating is that there is a belief that certain foods bring good fortune. Also, food that are specially for new year - the equivalent to turkey and cranberry sauce, sort of ... 

This article will give you an idea about it:

• https://www.chinahighlights.com/travelguide/chinese-food/chinese-new-year-food.htm

Much of this cultural information wasn't really something I understood growing up. The ideas washed over me like drizzling rain. 

As I become older, I like the traditions and so embrace the food list which includes dumplings, sticky rice and fish. As I love these foods anyway, it was an excuse on new year's day to have some gyoza for breakfast. I'm not yet at the stage where I'm making my own. Also, they're  easy to buy frozen and toss into the oven with a bit of oil. 

The last few years I've been doing more cooking. This is a steamed turnip cake which I made, but instead of Chinese sausage (lap cheong), I made a turkey mince with similar flavours. 

This is the turnip cake and lap cheong recipes that I based my versions with:

• Turnip Cake
  
• Chinese sausage (lap cheong)
  

My first attempt at bakwa, Chinese pork jerky, was also a success. This has always been a favourite and quite rare to find in Australia when I was growing up. I've yet to find it in London. 

I often like to adapt several recipes to find the version which will work best for me. These are the three I ended up with:

• Malaysian kitchen
  
• What to cook today
  
• Nyonya cooking
  

I improvised by adding charsiu marinade to give the bakwa and turkey mince flavour and colour. I also had Japanese rice vinegar as the rice wine / alcohol substitute.

Some other recipes that I'm looking at and may see if they work include:

• https://www.elmundoeats.com/en/glutinous-rice-with-pandan-custard-kuih-seri-muka/
• https://www.chinasichuanfood.com/sticky-rice-balls-nuomici/
• https://whattocooktoday.com/fried-nian-gao-sweet-potato-balls.html
• https://whattocooktoday.com/nian-gao.html

It's adventures in the kitchen that take me back to my childhood: my grandmother in the kitchen, a family gathering where my Mum would be super excited that an Aunty had made something which I must try, or a walkabout in Chinatown with stalls, firecrackers and dragon dancing. 

These cooking periods have been relaxing and a break away from the everyday. Sometimes, we need a festival to help us embrace creativity in different ways.