Fine dinner fare from north and south
Print Edition
Chinese New Year’s Eve family dinner, or nian ye fan (年夜饭), the big reunion dinner, is the most important meal of the year in Chinese culture.
Every family makes special food purchases, and there are big differences between the festival meals in northern and southern China.
Simon Choi, Chinese executive chef at Four Seasons Hotel Pudong, says that in warmer South China people prefer seafood, nuts and bird’s nest soup. In the north people like dried and pickled foods.
“Our hotel menu for family reunion dinner features typical ingredients from both northern and southern China, but the most popular will be Cantonese-style seafood dishes,” Choi says.
Cantonese cuisine, or yue cuisine (粤菜 yue is another name for Canton or Guangdong), is light, fresh, natural, not greasy, and only slightly spiced and seasoned. It’s famous for soups and seafood from Guangdong Province.
Light, slightly sweet sauces are used in dishes that are braised, stewed and sauteed to preserve the original flavor.
The hotel’s dinner menu features eight courses highlighted by superior bird’s nest soup served with bamboo piths in saffron sauce. The bird’s nests from Indonesia are stewed the traditional way and total preparation time is six hours.
Other dishes are braised goose web with fresh abalone; lobster salad with nuts; braised pork fillet with layered crispy tofu sheets in brown sauce; double-boiled sweetened pear soup with fritillary flower bulbs; and jujubes from Hetian in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.
Since 2014 is the Year of Horse, most dishes are named with the Chinese character ma (horse 马).
The hotel offers five private rooms for elegant dining.
Healthy dishes
At Twelve at Hengshan, Chinese executive chef Alex Xie provides a family dinner menu, with a focus on health. All dishes retain the natural taste of ingredients, without heavy sauce or strong seasoning.
Dishes include sautéed dry-cured ham with bamboo shoots and garlic bulbs; dried oyster; and traditional ba bao fan (八宝饭), or eight treasures rice pudding with red bean paste and coconut.
“I always prepare dried oyster for the Spring Festival,” Xie says. “It’s nutritious, high in protein and vitamins.”
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