Cooking for the Chinese New Year

We’re having a few friends over to celebrate the Chinese Spring Festival (Chinese New Year) this coming Saturday.

I’ve already dusted off the old mahjong set, found a few old tapes with Chinese music, been out to get the red envelopes and I’m even going to make my own red paper couplets.

But when it comes to food, let it be known that I’m not a great cook. So I’ll only be making the jiaozi (dumplings) myself, the rest of the food we’ll be getting from our fantastic local Chinese take-away.

I feel a bit embarrassed though that I can’t cook Chinese. After all I lived and worked in the heartland of Hunan province, so I should be able to rustle up some tasty, spicy dishes.

In an attempt to save face, I searched the net for Chinese dishes that even I could cook. Obviously there are quite a few sites out there about Chinese food, but the Learn to Cook Chinese Dishes website stood out with recipes even I can follow.

The recipes on the site are divided into categories such as “appetizer”, “vegetable”, “meat”, etc, making it easy to put together a banquet for a party. In fact the site has already put together a series of dishes for a “family banquet”, so you still have time to put a Spring Festival party together for a few friends or your family.

If you are planning a Spring Festival party and need a little help, like me, with the traditions around Chinese food, then the latest issue of the e-zine NiHao from China features an article on “The Five Elements - The Secret to Chinese Cooking”.

The e-zine itself is a great read, if you want to learn about China. It can be a bit slow to load, but features great articles. The latest issue for example includes an article about the Old Beijing project whose founder, Zhang Wei, we interviewed in our View of Local in Beijing, China. Be warned though, the e-zine also features the most haunting music that really pulls at my heartstrings and makes me want to go back to China. So if you’re also that way inclined, you may want to switch your speakers off.

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Technorati Tags: travel, Chinese New Year, Spring Festival, Chinese food

2 Responses to “Cooking for the Chinese New Year”

1. Meena:

   You will love how we celebrate Chinese New Year in Malaysia. We have loud music, lion dances, chinese lanterns hung along streets and buildings, red decorations and various items to signify wealth, health and happiness! And of course, the food’s great!!! As we say here in Malaysia, Gong Xi Fa Cai!!

   14 February, 2007 at 10:32
2. Anni Poulsen:

   Stop taunting me with food I can’t have! Sounds great, Meena! I wish, I could say the same for England, but apart from China Town in London, I doubt there’ll be any lion dances here.
   You’d laugh, if you saw the couplets I made yesterday, but I can’t find any around here, so I’ve made my own.

   Apparently, this coming year is an especially auspicious “golden pig year”, which only comes around every 60 years? A good year to have a baby, they say - not that I have any such plans, I’m too old - just thought I’d throw that in.

   Gong Xi Fa Cai!

   14 February, 2007 at 11:09

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