Hi all! Today is the first day of the Lunar New Year. I hope everyone had a good day!
I’m going to do a special Chinese New Year special since it’s the Lunar New Year! SO~ I’m going to talk a little about how the Chinese in Singapore celebrate their Lunar New Year. So, the next few posts will be on this topic.
The first post will be on food! LOL~ This post is rather specific to the food that my family usually have before and during Chinese New Year so I can’t exactly say that this is how all or most of the Chinese eat during Chinese New Year.
On the eve of the Lunar New Year, the Chinese will gather to have a good dinner with their families. During such reunion dinners, many delicacies can be found. However, in the case of my family, we usually have hot pot and several other dishes (like curry~ it might sound funny to some, but yeah, my family do enjoy spicy food n curry is a must-have dish during this occasion).
Anyway, having hot pot is quite common in Singapore for reunion dinners. I’m not too sure if this has got to do with the fact that less preparation is required? But from what I know, quite a few of my friends have hot pots for reunion dinners as well.
I only managed to take a pic of just some of the food we had (as I was getting in the way of my mum :p) Actually we had more! ^^
There are also other families who choose to whip up their own dishes or go to a restaurant for their reunion dinners.
Next~
What I really wanted to share, is this dish that we, Shanghainese (Shanghainese is a rare dialect group in Singapore since the main Chinese dialect groups in Singapore are Hokkien, Cantonese and Teochew) eat during the Lunar New Year, 年糕 (Nian Gao). It’s almost similar to the Korean 떡국 . I just had this today, and for my family, it’s almost a must that I eat this during Chinese New Year.
However, not all 年糕 (Nian Gao) look like the above. In fact, most of the 年糕 in Singapore looks the ones in the picture below. They are round brown things with the red paper (with a Chinese character).
These are chewy and sweet. You can eat it on its own or fry it (both are just as good).
There are also 年糕 in the shape of a fish! If you are interested, you might want to check out this site. Due to how exclusive such 年糕 are, they can be quite pricey as compared to the above 年糕.
That’s about it for the the part 1~ I’m going to talk about food again tomorrow~ however, other types of food. Today is just a starter! ^^
