Gung Hay Fat Choi..Happy New Year!

[+ Lucky]

Today starts out the year of the Pig, so if you felt honored when Time Magazine named you Person of the year, you should really feel honored to be have a year named after you! I mean, in some respects, aren't we all a little piggish?

 

Getting Lucky in Chinatown

 

Celebrate the Lunar New Year with our insider's guide

 

By RACHEL WHARTON

 

 

"The Chinese," says cookbook author and Chinese food scholar Grace Young, "believe you are what you eat."

So what she eats today - the start of the month-long Lunar New Year festival and the biggest Chinese holiday of the year - is extra important.

 

Laced with symbolic meaning, New Year's feasts and foods lay a positive foundation for the future, says Young.

 

Along with millions of other Asians, she's celebrating with "auspicious foods" like oranges (good luck and wealth), dumplings (they look like ancient gold coins) and even stir-fried lettuce (which, in Chinese, sounds a lot like "growing fortune").

 

To help all New Yorkers start the year 4705 on the right foot, Young has given us an insider's tour of her Chinatown favorites - especially those stocked with special New Year foods.

 

Eating them won't guarantee you'll be lucky in love, family or fortune, of course, but we're pretty sure you'll be well-fed.

 

START WITH EDIBLE LUNAR LESSONS

 

 

For a holiday layered with symbolic meanings, Young's first tip is to pick up some culinary knowledge at the tiny Chinese cultural center run by Julie Tay.

 

Young met Tay - whose one-room music, language and cooking school is called AiCenter-Wossing Center for Chinese (243 Grand St., 212-431-7373) - researching cooking traditions for her 2005 book "Breath of a Wok." An anthropologist by training, Tay teaches language, music and customs as well as cuisine.

 

On the day we stopped by, she was showing a trio studying home-style meals how to soak dried mushrooms and steam fresh fish.

 

(On March 3, a class will focus on foods of the New Year; visit http://www.wossing.com to sign up.)

 

GET A SWEET YEAR, TO GO

 

 

On New Year's Day, says Young, her parents still pull out the chuun hup, a teakwood tray with eight compartments for the candied sweets and nuts - kumquats, watermelon seeds, lotus root - that bring different types of good luck over the year.

 

These days, the "old-fashioned" trays Young prefers are hard to find - even her parents' were antiques - but you can buy your own chuun hup at stores like Dynasty Supermarket (68 Elizabeth St., 212-966-4943) or Deluxe Food Market (79 Elizabeth St., 212-925-5766).

 

Both markets, which are also excellent sources for stir-fry dry staples like red bean paste and soy sauce, says Young, have cartoon-decorated chuun hup for kids (Dynasty's are $2.88) and fancier trays for feast-dressed tables.

 

If you want to follow another of her parents' traditions - slipping a bit of cash into bright red lucky envelopes - you can get those here, too.

 

EAT PLENTY OF ROAST PORK, DUMPLINGS & NOODLES

 

'You always have roast pig," says Young of New Year feast tables, "because pig is symbolic of prosperity." That's doubly important this year, she adds, because this is the year of the boar.

 

For the best pork in Manhattan's Chinatown, says Young, try the roast suckling pig at Great N.Y. Noodletown (28%BD Bowery, 212-349-0923). At $15 a plate, it's twice the price of the Cantonese café's regular roast pork, but the extra-tender flesh and extra-crackly skin ("yum-o," says Young approvingly) are worth it.

 

While you're there, get an order of the wonton and noodle soup. The combo, says Young, means "good fortune and longevity for the year."

 

FIND THE FRESHEST CHINESE VEGETABLES

 

No spring festival - as the Lunar New Year is also called - would be complete without stir-fried spring greens, and finding the freshest is always a point of pride for Chinese cooks. Young gets hers from the closet-size W.K. Vegetable Co. (124-126 Mott St., 212-334-4603).

 

"It's my favorite produce market," says Young, who likes that its "pristine" yellow chives, bok choy and Chinese cabbages are kept inside - unlike the pawed-over varieties piled up on every street corner.

 

BUY A NEW WOK

 

Chinese cooks may keep their woks for decades, but the time to buy a new one is now: It symbolizes a fresh beginning, says Young. (It's wise, she adds, to throw in a kitchen spring cleaning, too.)

 

Young recommends Hung Chong Imports (14 Bowery, 212-349-3392) and staying far away from non-stick pans. Hung Chong stocks both the flat-bottomed carbon-steel pan that's best for most American stoves - it also has a nifty handle - and the traditional cast-iron kind.

 

Better still, they'll tell you how to season your woks with oil and Chinese chives, which helps prevent rust. (Young compiled dozens of traditional wok seasoning recipes, including Hung Chong's and one from Tay, in her cookbook "Breath of a Wok.")

 

ORDER A FAMILY-SIZE FEAST

 

 

At least once during the New Year, says Young, families celebrate with a multi-course meal from a restaurant like Chinatown's Oriental Garden (14 Elizabeth St., 212-619-0085).

 

Among the Cantonese restaurant's feast-worthy dishes - "it's the most important meal of the year, and you eat the most expensive food," says Young - are massive ginger and scallion-spiked Pacific oysters (thought to be good for business), whole fish (for fulfilled wishes and abundance) and red bean and chili-spiked clams (because they look like coins).

 

Then come stir-fried greens (for spring freshness or fortune), noodles with eggs and lobster (which stands in for a dragon) and a deboned, over-stuffed and mahogany-skinned whole chicken, representing both the phoenix, says Young, and "a proper beginning and an end."

 

Sound good? Just remember to call ahead: That $75 chicken - stuffed with a mix of sweet glutinous rice, mushrooms and Chinese sausage and big enough for 10 - has to be made a day in advance.

 

EAT EVEN MORE PORK

 

For the year of the pig, says Young, the pork should be plentiful. One of her favorite snacks is the spicy pork jerky sold from giant bell jars at Jung's Dried Beef Store (58 Mulberry St., 212-732-7645). They also sell sweet pork and sweet and spicy beef; a quarter-pound bag will set you back only $4.50.

 

STOCK UP ON CAKES, SWEET AND SAVORY

 

For those who follow New Year's traditions, says Young, mornings begin with Chinese cakes: flat, rectangular little snacks made from wonderfully seasoned taro root or turnips, or brown sugar, dates and sesame.

 

The savory versions are available year-round from take-out dim sum stalls or restaurants like Mandarin Court (61 Mott St., 212-608-3838). They keep a supply in a steam cabinet near the front door, but go early for the best selection.

 

The sweeter variety, called New Year's Cake, is a seasonal specialty, and you can look for it - and puffy-topped rice-flour cakes and red bean-filled sesame balls for good fortune - at bakeries like Golden Fung Wong (41 Mott St., 212-267-4037).

 

Just across the street, Fong Inn Too (46 Mott St., 212- 962-5196) also sells all of the above. But the best treat at this little snack shop known for its top-notch fresh tofu, soy milk and rice noodles is the hot tofu custard, says Young.

 

Served soft and silky in a cup with a shot of sugar syrup, it may not be an auspicious treat for the new year, but it's a mighty lucky find for a hungry shopper.

 

Originally published on February 18, 2007

[Louis]

Happy new year... check out the link

http://news.xinhuanet.com/audio/2003-06/17/content_923349.htm

 

P.S. Rember we have to make dumplings today....:-) I used to help make the dumplings... lots of fun....:-)

[Louis]

It is actually the year of the Golden Pig, which happens every 60 years....so it is a special year....:-)

[Rick Munroe]

>It is actually the year of the Golden Pig

 

So 2007 is the official year of water sports? }(

[Louis]

Rick...you are sharp today....what am I saying...everyday....:-)

[Rick Munroe]

>Rick...you are sharp today....what am I

>saying...everyday....:-)

 

Thanks, Louis. Am I sharp or do I just have an eye for filthy double entendre? For example, when I see this innocent to-do list, my imagination runs wild:

 

http://www.itisrocks.com/piss1035.jpg