Every year, Lunar New Year is celebrated around the globe with great fanfare: lion dances, red packets stuffed with money, and of course, 10-course banquets comprising dishes made with exquisite ingredients and brimming with symbolism--foods that are homonyms or look-alikes for gold bars, prosperity, family...
Growing up, my family didn't have a tradition of baking Christmas cookies. My mom would place several orders of Bûche de Noël (Christmas log cake) for our family dinner on Christmas eve and to give away to friends but nary a sugar cookie was in sight. I never...
The Lunar New Year celebration lasts 15 days so there's still plenty of time to eat your fill of lucky and auspicious foods for a prosperous year ahead. Egg rolls (also called fried spring rolls) are a favorite all year round but they're considered an auspicious...
When I was growing up, fragrant yellow coconut rice was right at home sitting next to the roast beef and/or honey-baked ham during Christmas dinner. Every year, my mum would make nasi tumpeng, yellow coconut rice served with a smorgasbord of Indonesian dishes. Come to think...
As I mentioned in New Beginnings Part I, I’m investing all my New Year mojo in yu sheng (Mandarin for "raw fish"), only my version uses tea-cured salmon which is technically still raw. Also called yee sang (in Cantonese), this "salad" is usually eaten in restaurants...
Chinese New Year is a celebration of new beginnings and many Chinese take the saying “out with the old, in with the new” very seriously. This year, the Year of the Dragon, is drumming up a little more hoo-ha--and will welcome quite a few more babies--than...
Growing up, my family didn't have a tradition of baking Christmas cookies. My mom would place several orders of Bûche de Noël (Christmas log cake) for our family dinner on Christmas eve and to give away to friends but nary a sugar cookie was in sight. I never...
Whew ...
New year cake and mandarin oranges are two standards eaten during Chinese New Year's My family doesn’t celebrate Chinese New Year in a big way. In fact, my dad has always insisted we are NOT Chinese. My siblings and I always took that statement with a...
A few weeks ago, I was in Seattle to celebrate my dad’s 70th birthday. That's my mom and dad. The peak of the nasi tumpeng is sliced off first, in the same tradition as slicing into a birthday cake (Photo courtesy of Ricky Raynaldi) My visit wasn’t...
