The Food Canon

This is a quintessential Cantonese and CNY dish, well known by it's Cantonese name, "Lap Mei Fun."

It never featured in my home's CNY dinners as we are more of the Hakka-Hokkien tradition. Like the Claypot Chicken Rice, it is easy to like this dish. With smokey and crusted rice perfumed by the waxed meat with encapsulated bursts of flavours - especially the goose liver sausage - and accompanied by a clear soup, your dinner is complete.

It is a WYSIWYG dish and you can make out the ingredients just by looking at it. With waxed meat, rice and a pot, you are good to go. I may just make some this coming CNY.

Lap Mei Fun

CNY is coming again.

If you are a Chinese, you do want to have some meals at home, especially for the Reunion Dinner. You can buy some of the expensive takeaways but nothing come close to the joy of home cooking. Or to put it more accurately, the joy of reliving some of the family tradition you were brought up in.

The best dishes are the one you and your siblings grew up with. They do need to be "authentic", and that is a quality which only your taste memories can judge. You are cooking up a Tan, Wong or Chan dish. Nonya, Hokkien or Hakka (that's me), CNY is about recreating memories and passing on family culinary traditions for the next generation.
I am still planning my menu. I will be blogging some recipes that should inspire you to work on yours. Meanwhile, here are a few reminders or tips. (You may also find my last CNY reflections in 2012 helpful.)

I have just turned 50. Many things in life get better with time. Some say you go downhill after 50. I think I will stay on top for a while and enjoy the view.

My Mum's Nasi Lemak recipe gets better with time, it seems. I did one party for more than 50 pax recently. The good thing about repeating recipes - Nasi Lemak is such a great party dish - is that you get to improve them. Good as my Mum's recipe is, she will be the first to tell you that hers can be improved on. The last party one would have made her proud and I wished she was around.