re-cycled food

so, let's talk about lunar new year food...

i always find it interesting and rather ironic that we have excellent freshly cooked food for our reunion dinners. and then we eat all the left overs on the first day of the lunar new year, or for that matter, first 2-3 days. haha... then again, you cannot underestimate left over food. food that has been left over make the best dishes for rice after they are recooked again. in fact, many of the best asian cookings are food that had been stewed over and over again. just think about kong bak (stewed pork, hokkien style), chap chye (stewed vegetables, hokkien/ nonya style), bibimbap (rice mixed with stewed beef and assortment of vegetables, korean style), and for that matter, curry chicken that has been cooked over and over again! yummy right? haha... from another perspective, i think we asians (particularly, chinese) are one of the most eco-friendly people... we leave almost nothing behind. heheh...

but i would go further to posit that this is a result of environmental conditioning. a case of survival cos traditionally and historically speaking, before the invention of the refrigerators, many would preserve meats, vegetables, fruits, (through drying and the use of sugar/ salt/ wax/ etc) when winter approaches and eat them through the winter. in fact, as recent as in the 90s, i still see chinese people in their villages kill their pigs and hang them out to freeze just like how they dry their laundry! and with the coming of the lunar new years, or to celebrate the arrival of spring, they would bring out all the leftover preserved meats, stewed and soften them into delicacies and wallop them! after all, food kept through the moist weather of spring will likely spoil due to moulds and what have yous! so... 

but of cos, many of these practices had been retained despite the fact that many mainland chinese had migrated to warmer countries such as malaysia and singapore. so, here in my family, we continue to enjoy lup cheong (preserved pork sausage), stew our roast pork, chap chye, etc... haha! and so for lunar new year this year, it was simply food and more food! yup, jiak jiak jiak! i had roast duck, roast pork, steamed chicken, babi ponteh (nonya kong bak), steamed fish (must have cos fish or yu sound like abundance in chinese), tofu fried with leek (suan for prosperity, cos the word suan [or leek in hokkien] sounds like "count" or "count money")... of cos, some other common dishes that we used to have in recent years include curry chicken, ayam buah keluak, ngoh hiang, steamboat, etc etc etc...

so what did you have for your lunar new year reunion dinners and on the new year itself?

yums!