Countdown to Chinese New Year 2024 is on!
It’s time to celebrate, again.
It’s less than a week to Chinese New Year! This is just a short posting to wish everyone a very Happy and Prosperous Chinese New Year.
And I wish to share with you a traditional pork dish, which my late mother used to cook without fail, every Chinese New Year. It is for sure one of my favorite Chinese New Year dishes as the combo of spices marries well together to produce a delectable and delicately spiced tender braised meat. It brings back lots of memories of many Chinese New Year’s past.
Towns and cities are already probably painted red by now. It is pretty much common knowledge red is the color of auspiciousness, good luck, prosperity, and joy for the Chinese people the world over. This bright uplifting color is the bond that binds Chinese people globally. No matter where you are in the world, you will see ‘red’ come Chinese New Year. Cities, houses, people, and even foods will be dressed in red. Lines of red lanterns are strung across roads, at times crisscrossing them for great distances, on buildings and trees, and are also hung in porches of houses and are believed to drive away bad luck. Although some traditions are dying out, it is still common to find red chai kees ( a long length of red cloth) hung decoratively across the doorways of houses. Being a spring festival, placing flowers at the front and inside of houses serves more than just decorative purposes but negates bad energy and welcomes good energy/luck. At the baseline, many practices are associated with or linked to driving away bad luck and inviting good luck. Non-exhaustively, these include pasting decorative red paper cuttings on doors and windows of homes, New Year couplets (good New Year wishes normally written in calligraphy) on doors, and placing kumquat plants around the house to invite wealth and prosperity.
Chinese New Year delicacies and all manner of cookies and sweetmeats would have been selling uproariously all over the place for the last few weeks. The ‘air’ of festivity would have been heavy in the air. One cannot help but be affected by all the clamor and merrymaking. It is that infectious! And more so once the lion dances begin their rounds. Perhaps this year (Green Wood Dragon year) will see more dragons coming out too.
Sek Bak (Pork braised with fragrant spices and soy sauce)
1.5 kg pork (shoulder cut)
15-20 shallots, skinned and sliced
3 pips garlic, skinned and crushed
1” each galangal and ginger, skinned and sliced
5 cm cinnamon bark
1 whole star anise
3 cloves
2 stalks serai (lemongrass)
125 ml cooking oil
24-28 fl oz water
3 level tbsp sugar
125 ml light soy sauce
salt to taste, if necessary
2 pieces taukwah
Method:
1. The meat should be left in large pieces (cut into 3-4 pieces). Wash and drain.
2. Heat the oil in a large pot, add the shallots, garlic, galangal, ginger, cinnamon, star anise, cloves and serai, and fry until fragrant. Do not let them burn.
3 Add the meat and turn them about with the spices (about 5 mins.). Add the soy sauce slowly and the sugar and let them ‘fry’ with the meat and spices for another 5 mins. to release the spices’ fragrance.
4. Slowly add the water (boiling), stir to mix, cover the pot and simmer for 1 – 1 ½ hours over a low flame or until the meat is tender and the gravy reduced. Check occasionally to ensure the meat does not stick to the pot and burn. Adjust seasoning/saltiness. Add the taukwah about ½ hour before the dish is done.
5. Slice the meat before serving. Serve hot.
Adapted from “Cooking Without Tears”
Wan Evelyn, Cooking without Tears, Kuala Lumpur, Wan Evelyn, 2002
