The signature Chinese New Year dish is named after two of its ingredients: oysters and dried seaweed, in Chinese 蠔士髮菜 (pronounced "ho see fat choi") and in fact, it's just the sound of the dish that made it "lucky" for Chinese New Year, where a good name is everything. The oyster and sea weed sounds like "good things and prosperity" 好事發財 ("ho see fat choi") making it the key dish in any Chinese New Year dinner (for the Cantonese speaking at least).
Traditionally at my home, my mom would make this dish for Chinese New Year's eve, serve half of it and have the other half for the second day of the new year, when we have the first real dinner to mark the beginning of the year. While the two key ingredients gave the dish its name, it is in fact made with quite a few more things, all of which have their own significance. I emphasized "at my home" because every family has its own interpretation of tradition and I'm sure if we were to ask 10 Chinese families what they put in their Chinese New Year dish, you'll get 10 different answers.
Dried oysters (as opposed to fresh) are the best for this dish. These need to be soaked for a few hours or overnight in just enough water to cover. The seaweed is not just any seaweed. It has to be "fat choi". See picture below - and for origin, check out this
wikipedia article, it may come up in Chinese, just click translate. It is black and looks like human hair, hence its name translates as "hair veggie". It is quite expensive and there are fakes around. I've never bought it in Toronto. The supply I had was given to me more than 10 years ago. It's dried, it will last forever in the fridge but it won't last long on the table. Alas, this is the last of my supply - I will have to start looking for it, maybe in Hong Kong...
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| Dried seaweed or "fat choi" |
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| dried oysters |
Other ingredients: quail's eggs (birth, new life), dried mushrooms, bamboo shoots (spring, new life), lotus root (for meeting the right companion), dried scallops, enoki, dried bean curd can all be included.
Sometimes pig's tongue is also added for more luck (tongue in Chinese is "lei", sounds like luck).
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| Quail's eggs |
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| dried mushrooms |
Lotus root, bamboo shoot
Enoki mushrooms
All ingredients are stir fried in a bit of oil and ginger, garlic, starting with the oysters and mushrooms. Add some stock and simmer for a few minutes before adding the other ingredients, leaving the seaweed last because they soak up the sauce. I usually leave them in one lump as they tend to split up otherwise and would be hard to find. The boiled and peeled quail's eggs are best browned in a separate pan so they don't break up as easily. Add these after everything else is cooked.
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| 發財好事 |
The square piece at the top of the domed grill was a piece of pork fat that they used to grease the grill - clever! and yet while the juice from the meat dripped into the soup, there was no grease in the soup.
