Celebrate the Lunar New Year at Your Table

Lunar New Year in China, Tet in Asia, and soon to be Losar in Tibet have historically been celebrated with foods especially endowed with symbolic meaning: long noodles for long life, fish for moving ahead because fish cannot move backwards, carrots for the color of coins--meaning prosperity. In the southern United States, New Year food is traditionally 'Hoppin John' whose blend of collards (green for money), black-eyed peas (for coins) and rice (for stability) adds up to a prosperous year ahead. In France a small plastic crown is inserted into a thin buttery torte and the person who gets the piece it's in is fated for a fabulous year (like a king). Jewish people celebrate their autumn New Year with honey to indicate the hope for sweetness ahead.  Just about every culture has fresh start food.     

So here are a few recipes to celebrate a new beginning.  
Ping Sha
This is the Tibetan go -to recipe for New Year because the extremely long noodles represent long life. The meat indicates wealth. The recipe is from my Himalayan collection. I can't find my photo.

Serves 4 as a main dish

 2 oz. bean thread noodles

1 lb. stewing or grilling beef, cut into 1 inch cubes

1 lg. onion, peeled

2 tbsp. ginger/garlic paste

1 tsp. chili powder

¼ tsp. salt

¼ tsp. crushed Szechuan pepper

1 lg. tomato

½ cup peas

4 boiling potatoes, peeled

1 tbsp. cooking oil (corn, canola, mustard, safflower)

Heat the oil in a medium casserole.  Over medium heat sauté the ginger/garlic paste and the onion until the onion is translucent.  Add the chili powder, Szechuan pepper and the beef and blend. Stir fry two-three minutes to brown the meat on all sides.

Chop the tomato and add along with two cups of water or enough to cover everything. Once it begins to boil, reduce heat to simmer, cover and cook for 30 minutes.

Put the Asian noodles in a large bowl and totally cover them with boiling water. Let stand 20 minutes. They will expand. Cook vermicelli according to package directions. Drain. Cut with a scissors two or three times to make them easier to handle.

Slice the potatoes into thin disks or cut them into bite-sized chunks. Add to the stew and continue to cook another 5 minutes.

Add the peas and salt, stirring to blend. Add another cup of water if necessary to have everything just covered. Simmer five minutes.

Stir in the noodles. Heat through. They will soak up the sauce.  Serve.

Soba Noodles with Long Beans and Mushrooms

In this Japanese recipe from my book, Veggiyana, the Dharma of Cooking,  the long noodles symbolize long life as do the long green beans. The mushrooms, which represent the element of air because they are fertilized by flying spores, symbolize opportunity, which can mean prosperity of all sorts.
A word about soba: It's supposed to be buckwheat but many if not most soba noodles sold in this country contain a fair amount of white wheat so please read package labels.

Serves 8

¾ lb soba noodles

3 tbsp corn oil

2 tbsp sesame oil

3 lg garlic cloves, peeled, smashed and sliced into very thin strips

½ tsp red pepper flakes

½ lb Chinese long beans or any green bean like Blue Lake or Kentucky Wonder, cut uniformly into 2- 2½ ” lengths

¼ cup vegetable broth or water

1 bunch scallions, cleaned and minced

10 oz. shitake mushrooms, stems off, washed and sliced into thin strips

3 ½ tbsp Chinese rice wine or Japanese Mirin

4 tbsp soy sauce

Fresh cilantro leaves, chopped for garnish

Cook the soba noodles in boiling water according to package instructions. Drain and coat with 1 tbsp sesame oil.

In a wok or other large sauté pan, heat corn oil and 1 tbsp sesame oil over medium high heat. Add garlic and red pepper flakes, lower heat to medium and sauté 30 seconds. Add green beans and ¼ cup vegetable broth or water. Stir-fry over medium low heat 1-2 minutes until the liquid has mostly evaporated. Add mushrooms, scallion and rice wine, blending with other ingredients. Cover and cook 3 minutes or until mushrooms are soft and shiny. Remove cover.

Add soba and soy sauce, carefully blending. You will probably needs large forks or pasta implements to do this.  Continue cooking over medium low heat until noodles are hot, 1-2 minutes. Remove from heat. Garnish with chopped fresh cilantro leaves to serve.

Buddha's Delight

This ubiquitous and seemingly ordinary restaurant staple is

perhaps the ultimate Chinese New Year dish. Overseas Chinese families—those who fled the onset of Communist China-- continue to celebrate their premier ethnic and national holiday by preparing this vegan dish originally created in Buddhist monasteries. It honors their Buddhist tradition of not killing any living being on the first day of a fresh start. The restraint reminds them of the possibility of renewal and change, for the various ingredients of the original Buddha’s Delight as composed by devout meditators, luohans, or arhats in Sanskrit, are supposed to cleanse, charge and purify the body the way Dharma cleans, charges and purifies the mind.

Since the Chinese consider the number 18 to be lucky, authentic recipes require 18 ingredients, although nine is often a housewife’s limit. Certain highly symbolic components are deemed indispensible: cellophane noodles (long life), tofu (made by the magic of fermentation, it stands for blessings), snow peas (unity because the peas remain together in the pod, water chestnuts (opportunity), wood ear mushrooms (longevity), cabbage (its many leaves indicate prosperity), carrots (gold coins) and bamboo shoots (new chances).

No utterly genuine recipe would include garlic, onions, leeks or chives since these pungent alliums, “smelling foods”, were strictly forbidden for Chinese Buddhist monks. Monastery cooks would’ve poured soy sauce, sesame oil and perhaps a splash of rice vinegar into the wok for seasoning. They might have also stirred in the key flavoring agent relied upon today, sufu or fu shung, red fermented bean curd, sometimes called in English “Chinese cheese” for its resemblance to very creamy blue cheese.

Because this is normally served as one of many dishes at a Chinese meal, it will feed 8 people being served more food.

                          

1 1/2 tbsp corn oil

1 cube fermented red bean curd (Fu Shung) or 1 tsp miso paste as an easier to find alternative

2 oz tofu (extra firm is best, pressed is better, sticks are most authentic), cut into thin strips

1 oz wood ear or shitake mushrooms (whichever you can find; soak any that are dried)

3/4 cup soaked golden needles (lily buds), soaked overnight

½ dozen peeled gingko nuts or raw, shelled peanuts

10 snow peas, cleaned

10 water chestnuts, drained from the can and halved

1/3-1/2 cup bamboo shoots

any one of the following (depending on what you can find):

 1/4 cup jujubes (red Chinese dates), soaked overnight and pitted

 1/3 cup black Chinese moss (fat choi), soaked overnight

 1 sm lotus root, peeled and sliced into thin disks

1 carrot, peeled and cut into thin disks

6.5-7 oz cellophane noodles (depending on how they are packaged), soaked in boiling water for two minutes and drained just before you start

2 tbsp soy sauce, or more to your taste

2 tbsp sesame oil

1 tbsp rice cooking wine or vinegar

Do not throw away any of the soaking water. Combine them
Have all ingredients ready to throw into the wok or skillet. Arrange them on a large platter.

Heat oil in a wok or large skillet over a hot flame. Add fermented bean curd or hoisin sauce and stir to blend. Fry tofu strips for one minute to crisp them. Add mushrooms, lily buds, nuts, snow peas, water chestnuts, bamboo shoots and whichever of the three final ingredients you chose. Stir-fry for one minute.

Add noodles and ½ cup of the soaking water. Try to separate the noodles and blend into the other ingredients. Stir-fry 2-3 minutes, adding soaking water in ¼ cup increments as needed to nothing sticks or burns. The steam from the water is also necessary for fast cooking.
Add soy sauce, sesame oil and vinegar, stirring to blend. Continue to stir-fry 1-2 minutes, making sure there is always some liquid in the bottom of the pan. Remove from heat and serve.
 
Salt Crusted Whole Fish
This is the recipe I am about to try. You can make it into a full blast, very colorful New Year celebration by serving it with garlic noodles and carrot salad. I've posted those recipes before.

2 lemons, 1 zested and juiced and 1 sliced into thin rounds

1 bunch fresh thyme, leaves only

1 tsp dried sage or 4 sage leaves

3 cloves garlic, smashed

9 egg whites

8 cups kosher salt

Two 1-pound whole fish, fins and gills removed

High-quality olive oil, for finishing

Heat the oven to 450º.

In a food processor, combine lemon zest and juice, half the thyme, sage and garlic. Pulse to a coarse paste. Add egg whites and puree until very frothy and foamy.

In a large bowl combine that mixture with salt and mix until it becomes a moist paste.

Place half of the lemon slices and half the thyme in the cavity of each of the fish. On a baking sheet, place a little less than half of the salt mixture in two rows. Lay the fish on top of each row. Pack the remaining salt mixture around the fish to completely encase them, pressing the mixture firmly on the fish to create a crust.

Roast the fish for 25 minutes. Remove and let rest for 10 minutes.

Crack open the salt crust and brush the excess salt from the fish. Remove the top fillet, pull the spine out and remove the bottom fillet. Drizzle with olive oil and serve with the remaining lemon slices.