Happy Chinese New Year

I always heard that spending Chinese New Year (Spring Festival) actually in China would be an experience, but I didn’t realize how overwhelming the celebrations would be. I watched Shanghai ring in the new year with five straight days of incredible (and deafening) fireworks, interesting/superstitious customs, and of course endless amounts of eating.

I had a couple of quite epic meals, thanks to the generosity of both A’s family and other local Shanghainese friends. My NY Eve meal, for instance, consisted of a series of 10 or so cold appetizers and 11 or so hot entrees, including some old favorites such as braised fatty pork thigh and steamed king crab … And accompanied by some new eats including grilled garden snake (for any who are wondering, it tasted like a slightly more dry, chewier version of chicken. Then again, that’s how anyone describes any mystery meat without any particularly pungent flavor.)

I was trying to decide how to encapsulate my Spring Festival eating extravaganza, given that each family eats different things to suit individualized tastes; however, there are a few uniting items that typically appear at most dinner tables. Fish – because it’s more of a delicacy and signals that you will have fish to eat for the rest of the year … Rice cakes (‘nian gao’) – savory and/or sweet because the sound of the word ‘gao’ denotes that you’ll be 'happy' for the rest of the year and reach 'higher' goals … But what I find more particular and a source of pride in every home that makes it homemade is the classic Chinese spring roll (‘chun juan’).

I’ve had these ‘spring rolls’ many times before, but they were always the deep fried egg rolls served in your ‘3-dishes for $4.99’ lunch set available at your local Ranch 99 supermarket. Never had I tasted homemade ones nor realized how delicious they could be. The filling so moist it almost borders on a thick soup … and expertly wrapped in an ever-so-thin and crispy bronze skin. When A told me before that he eats upwards of 20 or so each time he visits his aunt, I was shocked but now that I’ve finally tasted them, I know why. If fresh and carefully fried to avoid the excess oil and sogginess that usually accompanies deep-frying processes, the spring roll is more of a crispy, light vegetable delicacy rather than a starchy, oily sweet-and-sour soup accompaniment.

I have also searched online for the ‘recipe’ to this new years treat so that I could post it on this blog for friends and family; however, there are too many variants that there is no ‘one’ I feel that I can recommend. Each region will make its spring roll differently, so it’s impossible to dictate what the best or most ‘accurate’ method of making it is. Moreover, every family I think has their own recipe and notion of what the correct ‘way’ of cooking them is. But if this is any direction at all, A’s response to my request of his family’s recipe was that it’s made of ‘sliced pork, bamboo shoots, yellow chives, napa cabbage, diced carrots … and a whole lot of awesome …’ The rest I guess is up to your own creativity.