Galloping horases!

Three days from today, January 31, 2014, will be the start of the celebration of the Spring Festival and the wooden horse will be galloping at the Shangri-la's Mactan Island Resort & Spa to usher in Chinese New Year 2014. It is considered the most important of the traditional Chinese holidays and the Chinese people has been celebrating it for the last 5,000 years. Other nations like Korea, Vietnam and Mongolia also commemorate it, including countries where ethnic Chinese reside like Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, Canada and the United States of America.

It is the most auspicious time of the year to hold a family reunion, eat good food, drink good wine and wish everyone the best of wealth, health and happiness. But in China, it is difficult to get a ride home while competing with 800 million compatriots in the world's largest annual human migration (Chun Yun).

Your favourite food columnist with select media colleagues had a preview of what foods are best served in this most ancient and revered ceremony at the Tea of Spring, following revered traditions in the preparation of the banquet. The names of the dishes, ingredients and the sequence of dishes must bring in wealth, power, abundance and success.

A lavish banquet begins with the Yee Shang Tossing Ritual using the Tea of Spring Abalone Salad. People with the budget use abalone as the Yee (raw fish) as the primary ingredient and the rest of the ingredients are mixed and tossed together; the higher the toss (Shang), the better. The taste of this dish was surprisingly exquisite.

For those with limited budget, vegetarian version na lang. This ceremony evolved in Singapore and Malaysia because as a rule, people in ancient China do not eat raw food. Even water is cooked (boiled) and because it has a flat taste, tea was invented to flavor the water.

We had a most delicious soup, the Scallop Broth with Abalone and Crab Meat. Talk about the efforts in Chinese cookery, it must have taken 4 hours to prepare this stock and a mere 5 minutes, excuse me,  to consume it. The dish was followed by Deep Fried Coral Trout with Sweet and Sour Plum Sauce and presentation was in conformity with the tradition to serve it whole with the convenience for diners to eat the boneless fillet.

A Crispy Duck with Vegetables & Cashew Nuts followed and my beloved readers already know my preference to luscious fat and meat in the duck dishes compared to chicken. The Stir-fry Prawns, Szechuan Style with a subtle hot and spicy taste came next.

Braised Pork Belly with Sea Moss Sauce was then served. The moss is known as fat choy and in Cantonese, it sounds like "struck it rich". Years back, sea moss was an ordinary ingredient but today, no thanks to an ever increasing number of rich Chinese citizens; it has become very expensive like dried scallops, sea cucumber and abalone.

The last dish was the Braised Bean Curd Skin stuffed with Mixed Mushroom & Vegetables followed by a bowl of Tea of Spring fried rice with XO sauce. Dessert was Chilled Glutinous Rice with Creamy Mango Filling & Sweetened Lo Han Guo with Coconut Strips.

By the way, the horse is the only domesticated animal that can sleep standing up! To all my beloved readers, X?n Nián Kuài Lè ! [email protected]