Chinese New Year Food

2010 is a special year, since the Chinese lunar new year meets the Western Valentine's Day. To celebrate the new year with family or the Valentines' day with boyfriend/girlfriend is a question. No matter who you celebrate with, food is always able to enhance the festive atmosphere. So, what do we eat in New Year？

1. Dumplings (饺子）

The most popular Chinese snack-dumpling is regarded by foreigners as a "must" new year dish. However, the truth is dumpling is much more popular in the north part of China than in the south.

The inside of the dumplings can be all kinds of vegetables, meat and always with Tofu. There are many different ways to eat dumplings: you can boil, steam and fry it.

Dumplings with Soup



Dumplings without Soup



Steamed Dumplings



Fried Dumplings



No matter how you eat, be sure with vinegar and if you like spicy food, add some chilli sauce! Yummy, Yummy~

Dumplings also have different shapes:

Normal One:



Four Happiness Dumplings (四喜饺子): the shape is similar to the Chinese character for happiness-喜 (xi) and you can put four different insides!



Triangle Dumplings



Odd-shaped Dumplings: this shape is similar to the money used in ancient China which is made by gold or silver.



Fan-shaped Dumplings



Dumpling can also have different colors! If you add different ingredients when making the wrap, the dumplings can be colorful. For example if you add carrot juice, the dumplings will be orange!




2. As I mentioned before, in the south part of china, dumpling is not a "must" dish, but fish is! The pronunciation of fish (鱼)in Chinese is the same as the word 余 which means surplus. Thus, eating fish in the end of a year means people always have extra money or goods left.

Braised fish with soy sauce (红烧鱼):



Steamed Fish (清蒸鱼)



Fish Fillets in Hot Chili oil (水煮鱼): this dish is the trademark of Si'chuan Province and its feature is spicy, spicy and spicy! It will definitely makes you sweat and thus highly recommend in winter.



3. Rice Cake (年糕)



Rice cake is made by glutinous rice. It is considered good luck during the New Year , because its pronunciation is a homonym for "higher year." As such, eating rice cake has the symbolism of raising oneself higher in each coming year (年年高升 niánnián gāoshēng). It is usually made to tablet or strip. There are various ways to cook rice cake.

Fried rice cake:fry the rice cake with vegetables, eggs and meat.




Rice Cake Desserts: add sesame, sugar and fruit jam, rice cake can be made into all kinds of desserts!






So much food to eat in New Year! It is really nice to have the whole family together and enjoy those yummy food. We usually sit at a round table with more than 10 dishes and eat and talk! We call it "年夜饭"-the most important dinner of a year!