Such Wonderful Food at the Spring Festival

CEBU, Philippines – Last week, I started writing about the celebration of the Chinese New Year or the Spring Festival. The better hotels in Cebu competed to host the most elaborate festivity to usher in the New Year. The "rivalry" includes the quality of the food and drinks served to patrons, guests and members of the press. Your favourite food critic went to work tasting all those delicious food. For the last 5,000 years there have been traditional ceremonies practiced by the People of the Middle Kingdom to welcome the Lunar New Year. Radisson Blu Hotel Cebu faithfully follows these rites, like as the Lion Eye Dotting and Dance, Beating of the Drums, Dragon Dance, Firecrackers,Yee Shang Tossing Ceremony and my favourite part, the Chinese Banquet.

Yee (fish) Shang (toss) ritual has since become indispensable. It is a salad that uses raw fish fillets as the primary ingredient and the rest of the ingredients are tossed together; the higher the toss, the bigger the fortune.This tradition began either in Singapore or Malaysia because eating raw fish was taboo in ancient China. However, there are documents recording "raw fish being eaten during this festive season" in the16th century Qing Dynasty and in Chaozhou and Shantou of the Soong Dynasty.

A Chinese Banquet followed and the kitchen brigade of Radisson Blu Hotel wasvery careful in selecting the dishes to symbolize long life, wealth or rising fortunes, family togetherness, sweet life and everything that is good including peace, joy and prosperity. After taking the necessary food photos, my attention was hooked on certain dishes on display.

The rice at the beautiful Spanish paellera was topped with Chinese ingredients like sausages, red dates, fried fish balls and roast pork. The color "white" was taboo during the celebrations, so the color of fish balls and tofu were altered by frying or braising it with soy sauce.  In another corner, there were appetizers like Five Spices Soya Tofu, Jellyfish Salad, Sliced Abalone Mushrooms in Sesame Oil and Century Eggs with Pickled Ginger.

We were served the Double Boiled Chicken with Dried Scallop and Mushroom Soup. I skipped some of the dishes and went straight for a taste of the Steamed Whole Grouper, Braised Sea Abalone in Oyster Sauce, Roast Beef Short Ribs in Hoisin Sauce, the Chinese cabbage in Abalone Sauce and the Roast Whole Suckling Pig.

When a lot of meats are served, Filipinos usually ignore fish dishes and true enough, I was alone in tasting the fish, excuse me, which I picked on with surgical precision - first the cheeks, then the belly and finally the gelatinous nooks and crannies around the eyeballs. I also tried the Cabbage Rolls in Abalone Sauce because it had black moss or Fat Choy (sounds like "struck it rich" in Cantonese), Braised Sea Abalone (the price of which is a modest 3,500 pesos per can!) and, finally, the meats like the suckling pig (only a small bite, honest!) and my favourite, the Roast Beef Short Ribs in Hoisin Sauce.

Congratulations to all the hotels that gave their best to usher in the Chinese New Year. According to a Chinese proverb: "You have to put out some money to bring more in." Very wise, this Chinese!