Some CNY Treats!

Come and gone are the festivities of the lunar new year. Amongst all the joy and fun of celebration, I personally enjoy festive food. Agree or disagree, here are some simple recipes to complete your festive menu!

1. Sangria
Sangria means "bloody" in Spanish and Portuguese and it is a drink commonly served in countries with Spanish and Portuguese influence. It’s actually a concoction of meant to tingle the senses, a fruit cocktail mixed with red wine and soda. Alternatively, “sangria Blanca” is its name when white wine is used. I find white wine tastier than red wine, but I’ll let you be the judge of that.

Here’s some simple steps to make a glorious jug of sangria:
Ingredients:
Mixed Fruits (your choice and your budget!)
>A serving jug
>Ladle
>Soda (for the fizzy refreshment)
>White/ Red wine (for the slow kick after the fizz)
>Fruit juice (Orange, Apple etc)
>Ice cubes (or chill your white wine and fruits, red wine usually goes better at room temp)

1. Chop up some of your favourite fruits into small pieces or get cocktail mixes in cans from the shop. Oranges, apples, grapes, peaches, apricots, berries, pineapples mangoes, kiwi are some of the fruits I’ve tried and they all go well.
2. Get a serving jug and fill it halfway with the mixed fruits.
3. Pour in 2 parts wine, 1 part soda and 1 part fruit juice
4. Stir well with a lil ice and enjoy!

2. Yusheng , yee sang or yuu sahng (simplified Chinese: 鱼生; pinyin: yúshēng) is a Chaozhou-style raw fish salad. It usually consists of strips of raw fish (most commonly salmon), mixed with shredded vegetables and a variety of sauces and condiments, among other ingredients. Yusheng literally means "raw fish" but since "fish (鱼)" is commonly conflated with its homophone "abundance (余)", Yúshēng (鱼生) is interpreted as a homophone for Yúshēng (余升) meaning an increase in abundance. Therefore, yusheng is considered a symbol of abundance, prosperity and vigor.

You will need:
For the main dish:
Raw fish (smoked salmon trimmings)
Capsicums (3 different colours of pepper)
Carrots
White Radish
Cucumbers
Sweet potates
Peanuts (crushed and browned on a dry pan)

For the plum sauce:
Plum sauce (available in stores)
Lemon(s)
Sesame seeds(browned on a dry pan)
Honey

Here’s how:
1. Grate all the vegetables in to separate piles.
2. Place the salmon trimmings and arrange as creatively as possible on a large platter and sprinkle generously the peanuts.
3. For the sauce, in a bowl, mix well half a cup of plum sauce with 1 table spoon of honey. Squeeze in some lemon juice to taste and add a table spoon of sesame seeds.
4. Usually we have five spice powder in red packets.
To serve, pour the sauce on the yee sang and stir!