Lunar New Year Souvenir Supplement: Year of the Rat: Watch What You Eat

By Amber Hsiao | Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Central to Lunar New Year celebrations is, of course, food. Feasting with families and friends throughout this special 15-day stretch dates back thousands of years. While not all New Year celebrations involve the same set of dishes, all involved foods are prepared with the utmost thoughtfulness and intricacy, with the coming year in mind.

There are entire books written on the topic of these elaborate feasts — even the Food Network has a special section on Chinese New Year foods and their significance. Here are a few foods you might want to include in your festivities.

Dumplings, or jiaozi, is a popular Chinese dish. While most likely available at your local supermarket in the freezer aisle, making and eating these can be especially significant in the near year. Since the shape of jiaozi resembles that of the ancient Chinese money made of gold, eating jiaozi during Chinese New Year celebrations symbolizes wealth and prosperity in the new year.

Food that rings in the new year might just portend the year to come.

Fish and fowl are also common dishes. The key to preparing these dishes is to make sure to keep the entire fish or duck intact. Cutting a piece of meat accidentally could mean that your luck in the coming year is severed, so be careful! It’s also equally important to make sure you don’t eat the entire dish after it is served — just leaving some meat signifies that you’ll have an abundance of luck in the new year.

There are also a number of uncooked foods considered lucky. Tangerines and oranges are often given as gifts — jui sounds similar to “gold” and “wealth” in Mandarin, so giving them to friends and family spreads the wealth and prosperity. Sweetened lotus roots, lotus seeds, and dried melon seeds similarly signify positive things: abundance, fertility, and profuse earnings, respectively.

While this is by no means an exhaustive list of foods, be sure to pay special attention to what you eat: Food that rings in the new year might just portend the year to come.

Make your own Dumplings Jiaozi

Ingredients:

1/2 pound of ground pork
3 teaspoons of green onion, minced
2 teaspoons of ginger, minced
sesame oil, salt, white pepper, soy sauce to flavor
finely chopped vegetable of your choice (e.g. celery or cabbage)
1-2 packets of dumpling skins (can be found at your local Asian supermarket)
small bowl of water

Directions:

Combine the ingredients in a mixing bowl—minus the dumpling skins! Add water to the mixture to smoothen it out if necessary. One quick way to check if you have the flavoring right is to drop a small mound of the meat into some boiling water to try, and then adjust ingredients accordingly. After you have your mix ready, place a small mound in the center of the dumpling skin, dip your finger the bowl of water at hand, and spread the water around the outer edge of the dumpling. Fold it in half, and pinch the skin together to form the dumpling. Boil or fry to cook.

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Originally appeared in AsianWeek Newspaper, Feature and Eatz section. See the original article.