Johnson’s menu
The following recipe can produce a Cantonese-style Spring Festival Eve dinner, as gourmet Johnson Wong recommends four “lucky dishes” from Cantonese cuisine.
1. White cut chicken with clam sauce
A chicken dish is a must-have on the Spring Festival Eve dinner menu, especially for the Year of the Rooster. The rooster has an image of being bold and energetic, and Guangdong people love eating chicken. This is a traditional Cantonese dish but it is not easy to find good clam sauce. Fishermen in the Pearl River Delta salt raw clam meat in bottles until they ferment. Stir-fry the clam sauce with ginger, garlic and dried tangerine peel, then boil the mix in chicken broth. Pour the special sauce onto white cut chicken.
2. Stir-fried dried oyster with Chinese sausage
In Cantonese, “dried oyster” sounds like “good business”, while “sausage” sounds like “lucky”. Therefore, this dish implies that the whole family can make a good living in the new year. To cook the dish, dice the dried oysters and Chinese sausage made from salted pork liver. Then stir-fry them together with bean sprouts. When eating the dish, you can use lettuce leaves to wrap the ingredients, so that it won’t get too oily and has a crispy taste.
3. Simmered mushrooms with oyster sauce
Dried mushrooms look like copper coins. Soak the dried mushrooms in water for them to swell but remember to drain away the water before stir-frying them with diced ginger and sugar. Then simmer the stir-fried mushrooms with oyster sauce. Place the mushrooms on a plate surrounded by boiled packchoi, a petite cabbage with emerald green leaves.
4. Pan-fried shrimp with ketchup
Shrimp is pronounced like “hah” so this dish has a cute name “Hah hah, laugh out loud”. Ketchup, whose red color is regarded by Chinese as a lucky color, brings out a sweet and sour flavor that appeals to both the elderly and kids, to both Chinese and foreigners. Also, “sour” sounds like “grandchild” in Cantonese, so the dish carries the hopes of the elderly for a big and prosperous family.