That being said, there are a lot of traditional Chinese food that you can get here (not a 100% authentic, but close enough, because most of the items are made here or from Los Angeles). I still miss the traditional tastes of these foods, but I will take what I can here since I cannot just hop on a plane back to Taiwan to get these. So I want to share some of my favorites with you here.
元宵 Lantern Festival
Lantern Festival s a festival celebrated on the fifteenth day of the first month in the lunar year in the Chinese calendar, the last day of the lunar Chinese New Year celebration. During the Lantern Festival, children go out at night to temples carrying paper lanterns and solve riddles on the lanterns
In ancient times, the lanterns were fairly simple, for only the emperor and noblemen had large ornate ones; in modern times, lanterns have been embellished with many complex designs. For example, lanterns are now often made in shapes of animals.
In some region and countries, this festival is also regarded as the Chinese version of St. Valentine’s Day, a day celebrating love and affection between lovers in Chinese tradition and culture.
湯圓 Tāngyuán
Tāngyuán is a Chinese food made from glutinous rice flour. Glutinous rice flour is mixed with a small amount of water to form balls and is then cooked and served in boiling water. Tangyuan can be either small or large, and filled or unfilled. They are traditionally eaten during Lantern Festival.
In both filled and unfilled tangyuan, the main ingredient is glutinous rice flour. For filled tangyuan, the filling can be either sweet or savoury. Northern variations mix sesame, peanuts, sweet bean paste and place them into bamboo baskets with rice flour, sprinkle wather continuously on the rice flour to form the fillings and form round balls. Southern variations are typically larger, and are made by wrapping the filling into sticky rice flour wrapping and crumpling them into balls.
Sweet fillings can be:
• A piece of cut sugarcane rock candy
• Sesame paste (ground black sesame seeds mixed with sugar and lard) - the most common filling
• Red bean paste (Azuki bean paste)
• Chopped peanuts and sugar
中秋節 Mid-Autumn Festival
The Mid-Autumn Festival is held on the 15th day of the eighth month in the Chinese calendar, which is in September or early October in the Gregorian calendar. It is a date that parallels the autumnal equinox of the solar calendar, when the moon is at its fullest and roundest. The traditional food of this festival is the mooncake, of which there are many different varieties.
The Mid-Autumn Festival is one of the few most important holidays in the Chinese calendar, the others being Chinese New Year and Winter Solstice, and is a legal holiday in several countries. Farmers celebrate the end of the fall harvesting season on this date. Traditionally on this day, Chinese family members and friends will gather to admire the bright mid-autumn harvest moon, and eat moon cakes and pomelos under the moon together.
Accompanying the celebration, there are additional cultural or regional customs, such as:
• Carrying brightly lit lanterns, lighting lanterns on towers, floating sky lanterns
• Burning incense in reverence to deities including Chang’e
• Erect the Mid-Autumn Festival.
• Collecting dandelion leaves and distributing them evenly among family members
• Fire Dragon Dances
• In Taiwan, since the 1980s, barbecuing meat outdoors has become a widespread way to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival.
月餅 Mooncake
Mooncake is a Chinese bakery product traditionally eaten during the Mid-Autumn Festival. The festival is for lunar worship and moon watching; mooncakes are regarded as an indispensable delicacy on this occasion. Mooncakes are offered between friends or on family gatherings while celebrating the festival. The Mid-Autumn Festival is one of the four most important Chinese festivals.
Typical mooncakes are round or rectangular pastries, measuring about 10 cm in diameter and 4–5 cm thick. A thick filling usually made from lotus seed paste is surrounded by a relatively thin (2–3 mm) crust and may contain yolks from salted duck eggs. Mooncakes are usually eaten in small wedges accompanied by Chinese tea.
Today, it is customary for businessmen and families to present them to their clients or relatives as presents, helping to fuel a demand for high-end mooncake styles. Mooncake energy content can vary with the filling and size; the average moon cake is within the range of 800 to 1200 kcal.
端午節 Duanwu Festival
The Duanwu Festival is believed to have originated in ancient China. A number of theories exist about its origins as a number of folk traditions and explanatory myths are connected to its observance. Today the best known of these relates to the suicide in 278 BCE of Qu Yuan, poet and statesman of the Chu kingdom during the Warring States period.
粽子Zongzi
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| The making of Zongzi |
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| Then you steam it or boil in water |
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| Finished product, so delicious! |
Zongzi is a traditional Chinese food, made of glutinous rice stuffed with different fillings and wrapped in bamboo or reed leaves. They are cooked by steaming or boiling. Laotians, Thais, and Cambodians (known as nom asom) also have similar traditional dishes. In the Western world, they are also known as rice dumplings. In Indonesia and Malaysia, they are known as bakcang, bacang, or zang, a loanword from Hakka, a Chinese dialect commonly used among Indonesian-Chinese, rather than Mandarin. Along the same lines, zongzi are more popularly known as machang among Chinese Filipinos.
Fillings
• Mung beans, split and dehulled
• adzuki bean paste
• Jujubes
• Char siu (Chinese barbecued pork)
• Chinese sausage
• Salted pork fat
• Chinese black mushrooms
• Salted duck eggs
• Chestnuts
• Cooked peanuts
• Mung beans
• Dried shrimp
• Dried Scallops
• Red-cooked pork
• Chicken
• Taro
Zongzi need to be steamed or boiled for several hours depending on how the rice is made prior to being added, along with the fillings. However, as the modes of zongzi styles have traveled and become mixed, today one can find all kinds of zongzi at traditional markets, and their types are not confined to which side of the Yellow River they originated from.
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