Chinese Celebration Foods & Recipes

The Chinese in Asian have often been accused of being conservatives since they cling tenaciously to custom and tradition. And why not? Life would be monotonous without the refreshing interlude provided by custom and tradition, which can be seen in various festivals both religious and secular. The Chinese have different traditional food to go with different festivals. Asian-Recipes.com selects the typical food designated for each Chinese festival.

The first and most important festival is the Chinese New Year, also called the Spring Festival. It is a joyous time of the year where family holds re-union gathering and dinner to celebrate this festival. For the special Chinese New Year, there have been a great variety of appetizing foods. As early as a month before, Chinese provision shops begin to display a great variety of preserved meats and other sun-dried ingredients used specifically in cooking the Chinese New year specialties. These are Chinese sausages of pork or duck's liver, waxed ducks, waxed pork belly strips, dried mushrooms, gingko nuts, chestnuts, dates, abalones, fish maws and so on.

The Cantonese have a very important dish for Chinese New Year. It must be taken as the fist meal of the day if one is to be endowed with all the good things in life. It consists of ho see (dried oysters) for benevolence from the word ho are associated with booming business, pow yee (abalones) for solidarity from the word pow, tung koo (dried mushrooms) for a round and complete family from the word tung, fatt choy (dried seaweeds) for luck and prosperity from the words fatt choy, fish signifies having a surplus year after year and New Year Cake signifies getting up.

On the whole, Chinese New year is a time for jollity and open house. One is apt to face the same calorie-saturated tit-bits in every home that one visits. The cakes from the old recipes are kuih kar pek (wafers /love letters), kuih bung kek (tapioca flour cookies), tee kuih (sweet, sticky cake), bee phang (sweet rice crispiest), lem peng (light air biscuits), cheoh hwa (jelly), etc. Whether old-fashioned or modern, rich or poor, a family always offer the there most important items to their guests, namely, oranges, melon seeds and groundnuts in the shell. This is the symbolic way to wish their guests health, wealth and longevity.

Chinese New Year Cuisines:

1. Abalone and Duck Web

2. Assorted Vegetarian Sautee

3. Assorted Vegetables Spring Roll

4. Braised Assorted Meat and Assorted vegetables

5. Braised Prawns with Tomato Ketchup

6. Deep Fried Yellow Fish

7. Dried Bamboo Shoot

8. Dried Oyster and Sea Moss with Lettuce

9. Fa Choi Sashimi

10. Firepot

11. Fried Pork Rolls

12. Gammon Dish

13. Grass Carp with Pickled Five Vegetables

14. Long-Live-Vegetables

15. Luck & Prosperity Stew (Fatt Choy)

16. Plain Chicken

17. Spicy Pig's Tongues

18. Steamed Bell Pepper and Bean Curd Sheet Stuffed with Prawn

19. Steamed Broccoli Stuffed with Shrimp Paste

20. Steamed Chicken with Quail Egg

21. Steamboat Dinner

22. Stewed Pig's Trotter with Dried Halibut

23. Stir Fried Vegetarian Dish

24. Supreme Mixed Vegetables

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1. Fried Sticky New Year Cake (Chain Tee Kuih)

2. Saute Glue Rice Flour Cake-Ningpo Style

3. Steamed Glutinous Rice Ball with Minced Pork

4. Steamed Tsailai Rice and Turnip

5. Sweet New Year's Cake

6. Sweet Potatoes in Thick Syrup (Pengat)

7. Taro Pudding

8. Tsailai Rice Cake

The sixty-first birthday is an auspicious day in the life of a Chinese. This is because the expected life span is sixty years and anything above that, is a blessing for which one is to be truly thankful. Every decade thereafter, it is celebrated with grandeur through every year it is celebrated on a smaller scale. The important dish for birthdays is the birthday noodles.

1. Longevity Flour Threads

2. Longevity Noodles

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There is also a celebration for month-old babies (Full Moon). Red glutinous rice cakes filled with sweet bean paste are made for this occasion. Those made in the shape of an apricot signify the birth of a girl and round ones signify the birth of a boy. Under the old custom, these glutinous cakes as well as turmeric glutinous rice, chicken curry and red-tinted, hard-boiled eggs are presented to close friends and relatives to herald an addition in the family. The modern celebration is to have a ten-course dinner in a restaurant and distribute the red eggs at the same time.

1. Red Glutinous "Turtle"

2. Yellow Glutinous Rice

The 5th day of the 5th Moon is the day when the Chinese in general eat rice dumplings wrapped in bamboo leaves to commemorate the legend of Ch'u Yuan. Though both the Cantonese and the Straits-born type of rice dumplings are sold throughout the year, private homes do prepare their own during the Festival. They are arduously prepared and the whole process usually takes two days. The Cantonese version is called Hum Toke Chung (salty pork dumpling) and has a filling of streaky pork and chestnuts cooked in soya sauce. The Straits-born version is called Nyonya Chang (pork dumpling) and has a filling of lean pork, groundnuts and spices. A third version is common to both communities. Named Kee Chang (lye water dumpling), it is smaller in size and has no filling. Instead, it is eaten with gula Melaka (palm syrup), honey or just granulated sugar.

Collection Of Festive Dumplings Recipes:

1. Nyonya Rice Dumplings

2. Salty Rice Dumplings

3. Savory Dumpling with Black Eyed Beans

4. Lotus Leaf Wrapped Chung

5. Vegetarian Red Beans Chung

6. Black and White Glutinous Rice Dumplings

 
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The 7th Moon is the time of remembrance for the dead. Cooked food and fruits are offered on the 14th or 15th day. Some business groups, e.g., market stallholders set up a roadside altar for offering prayers and food to the hungry ghosts. They even have a street opera for the poor, wandering souls. Private homes "invite" their dearly departed relatives to an offering of ducks, chickens, roast pork, vegetables, fruits and cakes.

Cheng Beng Specialty :

1. Yellow Spring Rolls

2. White Glutinous Rice Cakes

3. White Spring Rolls

The Moon Festival originated in China to celebrate the harvesting season. The moon is at its brightest on the 15th day of the 8th Moon. The festive food for this season is the moon cake. Chinese families present each other with moon cakes and on the 15th evening, a table is laid out in an open space in every Taoist home for the purpose of offering moon cakes, fruits and tea to the moon.

1. Moon Cakes (Cantonese Style)

2. Ping Pei Moon Cake

3. Dragon Fruit Jelly Moon Cake
   
4. Green Tea Luo Hun Guo Jelly Moon Cake

During the winter solstice, the Chinese again do homage to their ancestors, this time adding to the normal fare, a sweetened soup made from rice dough compressed into marbles. It is the kuih eenh and it comes in white, red , yellow, and green. These marbles are blanched before serving. The white ones are bigger than the others. All are eaten with white sugar or brown sugar syrup. This festival, Tang Chek, was very important in olden China for it marked the turning point in astronomy.

1. Glutinous Rice Marbles in Sweetened Soup (Kuih Eenh)

Chinese Wedding Specialty :

1. Green Glutinous Rice Cakes ( Ondeh-Ondeh)

2. Spicy Prawn Dumplings (Rempah Udang)

3. Chiffon Crumpet (Huat Kuih)

4. Blue Glutinous Rice Cakes ( Pulut Inti)

5. Green Crepes (Kuih Tayap)

6. Nine-Layer Glutinous Rice Cakes (Kuih Lapis)