RING IN THE YEAR OF THE DOG WITH CHINESE SOUL FOOD

For cookbook author, holiday is all about family and tradition

For author and cooking instructor Hsiao-Ching Chou, honouring Chinese New Year is about bringing family together.

Her extended family gathers at her Seattle home for an “annual reunion feast” where favourite dishes such as lion’s head meatballs and crispy duck hit the table.

“New Year’s is when we celebrate good luck, abundance and prosperity,” she says. “It’s an excuse to bring everybody around the table and share all the food that we love and impart those traditions to the younger generation.”

In Chou’s first cookbook, Chinese Soul Food (Sasquatch Books), she shares more than 80 recipes for the comfort foods she grew up with. Her aim is to “bring more people into the fold” with a welcoming approach to making both everyday meals and celebratory dishes.

Chinese New Year begins on Feb. 16 this year. Observed throughout East Asia, the festival is the longest and most significant in the Chinese lunisolar calendar and 2018’s Year of the Dog celebrations will take place over 15 days — ending with the Lantern Festival on March 2.

Dishes such as stir-fried rice cake with chicken and Chinese broccoli, and orange beef have auspicious qualities, making them fit for a New Year’s feast, Chou says.

Rice cake (“sticky cake” in Mandarin) is symbolic “because the words for sticky and year are homophones.”

The golden colour and shape of tangerines are reminiscent of gold ingots — an ancient currency — and are particularly auspicious, she adds. The citrus fruit is often incorporated into festive foods or arranged in a bowl as an offering.

“(Learning about the symbolism) teaches us about the language and the way of thinking as well as about the food,” Chou says.

“All across Asia people celebrate Lunar New Year. So some of the symbolism translates across the cultures and then others are specific to cultures. There’s so much to be learned. It’s pretty incredible.”

Recipes excerpted from Chinese Soul Food by Hsiao-Ching Chou, Sasquatch Books.

PHOTOS: CLARE BARBOZA/SASQUATCH BOOKS “Dumplings, in whatever form and from whatever culture, are so universally loved,” says cookbook author and cooking instructor Hsiao-Ching Chou.