Spring Festival snacks bring memories
Print Edition
KRIS Shao, 57, has dined out for Chinese’ New Year’s Eve dinner for many years. The family is too busy to prepare home cooking.
“When I was young, we started to prepare for the upcoming Spring Festival at least one month early. It was a tiring process. But now I really miss that. Even though I have the same old dish every year, it was different then,” said Shao, a wealthy businesswoman at a trading company.
In the past, when food was inadequate and rationed to each family, people made everything by themselves — from snacks to pastries.
“In the past we generally didn’t have many opportunities to enjoy these foods in normal times, so Spring Festival of course was the most important time of year to prepare all the delicacies to share with the family while celebrating the arrival of a new year,” Shao told Shanghai Daily. “Of all the traditional cuisine we have now in the restaurants, I miss the homemade pastries the most. They are hearty and authentic.”
Each member of Shao’s family had different responsibilities in preparing festive delicacies. Her mother always cooked the main dishes served at New Year’s dinner. Shao and her sisters and brothers were in charge of the snacks and pastries, as with most of the local families in Shanghai.
Peanuts, also known as longevity nuts in Chinese, and guazi (melon or sunflower seeds) needed to be stir fried in an iron pot. The family had to make nougats as well. Shao recalls the rush to cut the steaming hot large piece of nougats into small blocks.
Each pastry or dim sum served during Chinese New Year has a name or shape related to good fortune. For instance, huntun or wonton dumpling soup has the shape of a gold ingot, meaning prosperity. “Preparing dim sum was a time-consuming process. When I was assigned to make the pastries, for a moment I wished we didn’t have so many traditions,” she said.
People now can purchase frozen dim sum in the supermarket or at least get the raw ingredients conveniently, unlike during old times when people had to go through every step.
Tangyuan is a typical dim sum for Spring Festival, made from glutinous rice flour mixed with a small amount of water in the form of a ball and cooked in boiling water. The locals usually have it the first day of the lunar year, symbolizing family togetherness.
“Making glutinous rice flour is one tough task in a long to-do list for the Spring Festival,” said Shao.
The glutinous rice should be soaked into the water and be ground at least three times to be smooth and delicate.
“But the trickiest part is to dry the glutinous rice flour. It is the key that the flour can’t be blown in the south wind or be exposed to the sun, or it will turn yellow. So you had to be quite vigilant all the time and sometimes run up to the balcony to transfer the location,” she recalled.
Tangyuan can be made with both sweet and salty stuffings. Sweet black sesame, sweetened red bean paste and meatballs are the most common fillings.
Niangao (glutinous rice cake) is also one of the traditional festive dim sum snacks for Spring Festival, as the pronunciation signifies annual improvements. Other lucky pastries include spring roll for celebrating the upcoming spring time and Chongming cake, also signifying improvements.
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