Chinese New Year usually falls a month or two after Christmas and New Year. Because Chinese New Year is based on lunar calendar while New Year follows the solar calendar, the date for the former is never fixed. Anyway, December and January are usually busy time of the year for most in parts of the world that celebrate both Christmas and Chinese New Year. During this festive season, there are always shopping deals, social and corporate events and celebrations. Food always plays an important role to connect us all.
Chinese New Year's eve dinner is where most ethnic Chinese family members would gather for a meal. It is an important event where family members from all corners of the world would congregate to be present for the dinner. My family is no exception, over the decades, our tradition was to have steamboat.
Above is a photo I took 10 years ago. Our traditional steamboat meal is a very simple meal that is made of:
1) Broth or flavoured soup base.
2) Meat & Poultry - usually raw or fillet
3) Seafood - usually raw and to add flavour to the soup base.
4) Noodles, eggs, soy bean derivates like tofu or bean curd, fish/meat balls
5) Sauce (mixture of soy sauce, fried garlic, chilli, cilantro, sesame oil)
Over the last 2 years, my grandparents are immobile due to old age and we have been having meals at home. Besides, Penang is usually very quiet during this festive season and most restaurants are closed, not to mention the wet market that are usually empty for the first few days of Chinese New Year.
Chinese New Year Eve - Dinner
1) Seafood platter above is a Spanish dish called Paella, it consists of:
- variety of seafood squid, prawns, mussels, crab claw meat, scallops
- Chiroso Spanish sausages
- peas, fresh sliced lemons
- topped with saffron
2) Moroccan leg of lamb that was roasted for 6 hours, stuffing includes chic peas, preserved lemon, tomatoes and ras el hangout (a type of Moroccan spice).
3) Pork loin wrapped with bacon, cranberry, macadamia binder with bread crumbs.
Also on the menu are:
4) Coleslaw
5) Smoked portobello mushrooms which I absolutely love
6) And my favourite BBQ lobster that is drizzled with freshly squeezed lemons, grounded peppers, butter and garlic.
To compliment the served dishes are fruit punch and lime juice.
First Day of Chinese New Year - Lunch
My uncle, who is also the chef who is behind all our meals is preparing Vietnamese Ban Cha: vermicelli with roast pork, prawns and raw vegetables commonly used on Vietnamese dishes.
I love Vietnamese dishes because they consist of mainly fresh vegetables. My family members keep reminding me about the pho that ex-US President Obama had with chef Anthony Bourdain in Hanoi 2 years ago.
First Day of Chinese New Year - Dinner
My uncle (Our family chef) grilling our dinner on the newly purchased Weber BBQ set.
Medium rare tenderloin with corn on cobs and portobello mushroom. Exactly how I love my steak, would be good if we had more vegetables but we were in a hurry so it was fine.
Second Day of Chinese New Year - Lunch
Gyros (Greek wrap) - cumin, oregano rosemary lemon spit slow roast lamb shoulder served with garlic aioli, onions, lettuce tomato in pita bread. Simple and fun meal to make for all.
Second Day of Chinese New Year - Dinner
Variety of pizzas.... we made our own crust and sprinkle the pizzas with a variety of vegetables and raw ingredients. Used a lot of olive oil. We baked the pizzas for 20 minutes in the Weber BBQ Grill.
Fourth Day of Chinese New Year - Lunch
My mom is from Sarawak, and she regularly cooks Sarawak Laksa. It is a relatively easy meal to cook, only thing that you really need is the paste which is widely available in Sarawak but hard to get elsewhere. All the other needed ingredients are:
- bee hoon (rice noodles)
- eggs
- cilantro
- bean sprout
- eggs
- chicken
- lime
- prawns
Love this meal so much that I cooked it weekly back home in Canada. Anthony Bourdain love this dish, you can read about it here. My only issue is that I have an intolerance to thick coconut milk as it gives me upset stomach, but more often than not, I would enjoy the meal and then suffer later on.
Fifth Day of Chinese New Year - Dinner
Next is home speciality of Chinese noodle soup. Ingredients are shows above.
For starters, we have lemongrass with fish mince grilled slowly on Weber grill & peri peri chicken - red wine vinegar, chilli, garlic, lemon zest marinated chicken on rotisserie.
Here is how the noodle soup looks like, it was so good we finished it all (including the soup)
To top it off, we had baked mud crab. We just added oil to the shell of the crab and added salt and baked in the Weber grill until the shell turns red in color.
Sixth Day of Chinese New Year - Lunch
Before I left Penang, my uncle roasted a duck (star aines, cinnamon, five spice dry rub on rotisserie). It was succulent and juicy.
The day before, I requested for Hainanese Chicken Rice. But because they couldn't get all the need ingredients, I had Ipoh's Chicken Rice with Bean Sprout instead.
For those of you who do not know, Chinese New Year is celebrated for 15 days, good thing I have to come back to Kuala Lumpur or I'd definitely gain some weight. I still have a few social events to attend, namely the TeamMalaysiaBabes CNY Potluck and TeamMalaysia CNY Party. So I'd have a take a break from rich food these 3 days:)