Growing up in England, we celebrated special occasions with a mix of different foods. As a treat for Saturday supper, our family would have sirloin steak with rice when the takeaway closed. This was a family tradition, dating back to my grandfather! This was the day all the workers got paid as well. Dad will pan-fry the steaks with onions and mushrooms. Aside from salt, Lea & Perrins Worcestershire Sauce was used to add piquancy. It was eaten with white rice with dollops of Coleman’s English mustard.
At Christmas or sometimes as a Sunday treat, Mum would roast a Leg of Lamb. We would eat this with steamed savoy cabbage, sweetcorn and white rice. She would make a gravy from the drippings in the pan and slice up some of the lamb meat to put in it. We would enjoy our plate of Roast Lamb with lashings of mint sauce from a jar!
Chinese feast food was often served at Christmas and Lunar New Year. When preparing a Chinese feast, care was taken to have a lucky number of dishes - for example 3, 8, 9 or 10. These numbers symbolize health, prosperity, longevity and perfection respectively. You can even include the soup when counting or split a dish into 2 plates to make the count work for you! Whatever you do, don’t make 4 dishes.
Avoid white ingredients such as tofu as white is worn at funerals and ingredients such as squid which sounds like "getting fired from a job". Lucky dishes and ingredients include:
- Braised shittake mushrooms and "fat choi" with dried oysters and scallops on bed of lettuce
- Lucky shrimp for laughter
- Whole fish to keep all your luck (retain head and tail)
- Whole chicken or duck for luck
- Hakka speciality dish - taro with pork belly
- Vegetables
- A soup
- Stir-fried lobster with spring onions, ginger and garlic in XO tomato sauce
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| Braised dried scallops and oysters on bed of lettuce |
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