Top chefs share recipes for restaurant-style CNY dishes

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Chinese New Year is fast approaching in all its celebratory glory, heralding the start of a season of feasting. While many people will choose to head to restaurants to celebrate their annual reunion dinner, others will opt to cook family-style meals at home instead.

But what if you could bridge that divide and cook a restaurant-style Chinese dish in the comfort of your home?

Here, two chefs give you the opportunity to do just that, by sharing recipes for their signature Chinese New Year dishes and offering guidance and advice on how to nail each dish.

The soft-spoken, incredibly well-mannered Tan specialises in Cantonese and Szechuanese cuisine and has been a chef for 29 years, so you could say he knows a thing or two about Chinese food. In 2017, Tan even won the Scripps Network Asian Cuisine Chef of the Year Regional award at the World Gourmet Summit 2017.

Having always prioritised customers’ needs, Tan says he has noticed that there is an increasing trend of people wanting to mix and match their Chinese food, with many keen to incorporate spicier offerings into their meals. Which is why he came up with the CNY dish of Szechuan-style poached star grouper fish with preserved vegetables and green peppercorn, a perfectly-balanced spicy dish loaded with tender pieces of fish and accentuated by sharp mouthfuls of peppercorn – just enough to titillate the tastebuds without assasinating your tongue in the process.

“I would say the spice level is 6/10, which is the level that most people can accept. We cannot do it very, very spicy until your tongue is numb,” he says, referring to the famous Szechuan mala sauce that literally translates to tongue-numbing.

The dish also has an auspicious quality to it as fish is an especially important part of CNY celebrations, as the Mandarin word for fish is yu, which means extending the wealth. The traditional holiday greeting of Nian nian you yuliterally means abundance and prosperity every year.

For home cooks endeavouring to add this wonderfully spicy offering to their CNY reunion dinner table, Tan has a few tips to offer. “Select good dried chillies for this dish. Look at the size of the chillies, don’t select small ones and choose bright coloured chillies. You will need to pay attention to these things because sometimes shops keep the chillies for too long, so if you choose old chillies, there will be no oomph in your dish in the end,” he says.

Another dish that Tan has introduced at his restaurant is braised Ningbo rice cakes with pickled vegetables and king prawns. The dish features delicate slices of rice cakes, which have soaked up all the rich flavours in the dish and are tender with an addictively chewy bite.

Ningbo rice cakes originate from the city of Ningbo in China, and are called nian gao locally. The glutinous rice cakes are a common feature during CNY, because they are equated with raising oneself each year.

“When people eat this, they believe that their lifestyle level will be raised every year. That’s why traditionally, Shanghai people will celebrate the new year with these rice cakes. In Malaysia, some restaurants are starting to do it, so it is now a trendier dish, which is why we purposely made it for Chinese New Year,” says Tan.

To get the texture of the rice cakes just perfect, Tan advises home cooks to spend time making sure the rice cakes are cooked well.

“You have to take a bit of time to cook the ningbo, because it has a very flat taste, it’s made from glutinous rice, so you have to make sure it absorbs the seasoning and really soaks in the flavours. Take your time doing this,” he says.

Tan also says home cooks who are unable to find the original Ningbo rice cakes can replace them with Korean rice cakes instead, as they share a similar texture.

Ultimately, Tan says he believes these two dishes are easy for home cooks to recreate for CNY and will be nice new additions to the family table, in keeping with a growing demand for different Chinese fare during the festive period.

“They are easy to make and the taste goes very well during the CNY season, so you can mix-and-match with your usual home-cooked dishes,” says Tan.

SZECHUAN-STYLE STAR GROUPER WITH PRESERVED VEGETABLES AND PEPPERCORN

For the chicken stock
1.6 kg chopped chicken pieces
2 slices thick ginger
2 green spring onions
10g longan meat
water

For marination
250g boneless star grouper fish fillet (can be replaced with pomfret)
salt to taste
white pepper to taste
1 tsp Chinese wine
1 tsp corn starch

For making the spicy oil
4 tbsp cooking oil
10 dried chillies, soaked
10 Szechuan peppercorn

For cooking together
2 tbsp cooking oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp ginger, minced
1 stalk spring onion, chopped
1 1/2 tbsp Szechuan chilli bean paste
10 dried chillies, soaked
2 tbsp hot bean sauce
400ml homemade chicken stock
30g beansprouts
30g fresh shiitake mushrooms, sliced
40g preserved vegetables
30g leeks, sliced
salt to taste

For garnishing
2 tsp Szechuan green peppercorn
3 Szechuan round red peppercorn
2 tbsp spicy oil
a sprig of coriander leaves, for garnish

To make the chicken stock

In a large pot, add water. Put the chopped chicken pieces in, boil for 1 minute and immediately remove the chicken and drain.

In a stockpot, add ginger, green onions, longan meat and chicken and add water to cover chicken (just an inch over the chicken). Boil for 1 minute, then lower the heat and simmer for 1 hour. Remove chicken and set stock aside.

To cook

Slice the fish fillet diagonally and marinate with all the marination ingredients. Set aside.

To make the spicy oil, add oil in a wok and fry dried chilli and Szechuan pepper over low heat until fragrant (do not burn them). Chop peppers coarsely when cooled. Set spicy oil aside.

In a wok, heat up oil and fry garlic, ginger and spring onions. Add Szechuan chilli bean paste, dried chillies and hot bean sauce and stir to incorporate. Pour in 400ml of homemade chicken stock. Bring to a boil then gently add in vegetables and cook for 2 minutes. Place the fish slices in the mixture and stir gently to combine. On low heat, cook for 1 minute or till the fish is cooked. Season with salt to taste and remove from the heat.

Transfer mixture to a bowl and top with green peppercorns and red peppercorns on top. Heat up 2 tablespoons of the spicy oil and pour over the mixture. Garnish with coriander leaves and serve immediately.

BRAISED NINGBO RICE CAKE WITH PICKLED VEGETABLES AND KING PRAWN

240 Ningbo rice cake (can be replaced with Korean rice cakes)
1 freshwater king prawn, cleaned and cut into 4 pieces
1 tbsp cornflour
2 tbsp oil
1 tsp chopped garlic
25g minced chicken
4 fresh shiitake mushrooms, sliced
2 tbsp Tianjin pickled cabbage
1 tbsp cooking wine
60ml chicken stock (re-use chicken stock recipe from Szechuan fish)
1 tsp soya sauce
1 tsp oyster sauce
chicken seasoning to taste
white pepper to taste
sugar to taste

Slice the rice cake into thin slices. Rinse the rice cakes in water and drain.

Coat the prawn with a bit of cornflour. Heat up wok over high heat until smoking, and add oil to coat the wok. Sear the prawn to brown. Remove and set aside.

Leave some oil in the wok; add garlic, minced chicken, mushrooms and pickled cabbage. Stir-fry on high heat for a minute and add the cooking wine. Add the chicken stock and rice cakes and mix well for 30 seconds.

Put the prawn in and cover mixture for 1 minute. Remove cover and add the soya sauce, oyster sauce, chicken seasoning, white pepper and sugar. Mix well and stir-fry until the rice cakes are cooked through but still chewy. Serve hot.