Chinese New Year is just around the corner and soon many homes will cast their doors open to welcome guests eager to get a taste of this season’s fare. And while reunion dinners and large-scale open houses always seem to take centre stage during Chinese New Year, there’s something else that often piques our interest. Something far more unassuming – the snacks.
Like any other cultural holiday in this country, Chinese New Year celebrations also involve a large array of snacks for guests to indulge in while waiting for their main meal. But these snacks are more than just simple morsels; each one often symbolises something special, something to celebrate for the new year.
For example, it’s interesting to learn that peanuts actually symbolise a “long life”, which is why peanut cookies tend to be a popular fixture during Chinese New Year. Or that pineapple in Hokkien is “Ong Lai”, which means that “good luck is coming”, thus making pineapple tarts a staple at this time of the year too.
Suffice to say, it’s more than just ingredients. Each item served during the new year holds some level of significance and narrative. Another example of this is fish, which sounds like “surplus” in Chinese. And it’s not just actual fish that carries significance, but food items that resemble the shape of fish as well, for example, those fish-shaped bahulu.
There are many more ingredients and items that carry significance. Would it still be possible to make unique Chinese New Year snacks that are imbued with traditional Chinese symbolisms?
IDENTIFY AND ADAPT
The first thing to do is to identify the main flavour profile that you’d like to feature in your creation. This isn’t particularly difficult as there are so many options to choose from. Just don’t use anything that would be difficult to cook. For example, it would be hard to turn a pomelo into a snack, no matter how much prosperity or good luck they bring.
Another thing to avoid is an obscure ingredient – in terms of Chinese culture. An example of this would be corn. While it does symbolise “growth”, making caramel popcorn would seem rather odd for the Chinese New Year season.
Then, decide on what recipe to adapt. It could be anything from a new type of flavoured arrowroot chip or a meringue baked with ginger. I’ve decided to adapt a cookie recipe. The reason? Because it has a relatively long shelf life, and it’s rather easy to adapt it to any flavour or texture you desire.
BRING ON THE BISCOTTI
Biscotti? How is this a good Chinese New Year snack? Well, for one thing, it has an extremely long shelf life. And depending on the recipe you use (like this one), you can add in liquids and dried ingredients to adapt it to any kind of flavour you like.
I’ve settled on three flavours: Walnuts (for happiness), Dried Apricot (for wealth) and Mandarin Oranges (for prosperity and good luck). While I’ll cover what you’ll need to do in the recipe section, there are some tips and tricks that will help you get through this slightly tedious recipe.
The first thing you need is a strong arm or a good mixer. The dough for this recipe is thick, sticky and a little hard to work with. So, if you don’t have a mixer, it might be time for you to rope in a friend or family member to help you. After all, if the holidays don’t help you bond with your loved ones, what’s the point?
You’ll also need some counter space to work the dough and a lot of flour. The dough needs to be portioned out into four different logs, and since it’s so sticky, you’ll need to generously flour your work surface so that most of it ends up on your baking tray instead of your countertop.
The last tip is to always use a serrated knife when cutting your logs after they’’re baked for the first time. A normal knife would just destroy all your hard work because it doesn’t slice as cleanly.
So good luck! I hope that this recipe will encourage you to try and make some new snacks. And while you might adapt something western, you can still use traditional and symbolic ingredients to make it more significant for the new year.
CNY Biscotti
Dry Ingredients:
2 2/3 cupsFlour
1 ½ cupsGranulated sugar
2 tspBaking powder
1 tsp Fine salt
1 cupWalnuts, untoasted
1 cup Dried apricots, diced
Wet Ingredients:
1 tspVanilla extract
3Eggs
5 tbpsCanola oil
3 tbpsMandarin orange juice
2 Zest Mandarin oranges
Method
1.Preheat your oven to 180 degrees C
2.In a bowl, whisk all your dry ingredients until fully combined.
3.In a stand mixer with a paddle attachment, beat your wet ingredients until fully combined.
4.Pour in the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients and beat until just combined.
5.Flour your work surface.
6.With floured hands, place the dough onto the work surface and knead lightly until it combines.
7.Cut and shape into four equal sized logs.
8.Bake the logs on a lined baking sheet for 20 minutes – or brown on the sides. Make sure the logs are spaced so that they don’t bake together.
9.Let the logs cool.
10.Slice them with a serrated knife at an angle and place them in one layer on your baking sheet.
11.Place the baking sheet with the sliced biscotti in the oven for 15 – 18 minutes, rotating once so they bake evenly.
12.Let them cool on a wire rack. They will only crisp up once fully cooled.
13.If you want them crispier, place them back in a 150 degrees C oven for another 5 to 10 minutes after they have fully cooled.
14.Store in an airtight container.