Chinese New Year is one of the most celebrated occasions around the world; a time for families to get together in a grand reunion.
This festive holiday which lasts 15 days (16 if you count New Year ’s Eve) is full of feasting, but you don’t have to go to a restaurant to enjoy your favorite dishes. Electrolux’s line-up of kitchen appliances is here to help you welcome the Year of the Pig by making it easy to cook classic Chinese dishes, with recipe suggestions from its all new Life App.
To start, one can begin making radish cake, a comfort food enjoyed by many Chinese families that also symbolizes good fortune for the year to come. Start by grating daikon and adding a dash of salt. Then in a hot wok, fry shallots and add dried shrimp and Chinese sausage. Put in the grated radish, and add salt, black pepper and chicken powder. In a bowl combine all-purpose flour, sweet potato flour, egg and water. Stir the batter well then add the radish mixture and spring onion. Pan-fry the mixture in the wok for about three minutes on each side then it’s ready to serve!
Dumplings are another traditional dish eaten during the Chinese New Year. They are believed to symbolize wealth because of its shape, which resembles the ingots that were used as Chinese currency in ancient times.
Try your hand at making your own pork and shrimp siomai – mix chopped prawns in corn starch and salt and create a ground pork filling by mixing the pork with corn starch, ground white pepper, granulated sugar, Shaoxing cooking wine, light soy sauce, fish sauce, sesame oil and unsalted cooking stock. Rehydrate dried shiitake mushrooms and add finely chopped scallions and grated ginger.
Add all the ingredients in with the pork paste and blend well. Then put the paste in wonton wrappers and place dumplings into the parchment lined steamer.
Noodles are a symbol of long life and are staple dishes during special occasions. If you’re pressed for time, cook a simple stir fry noodle dish like Chinese Egg Noodles with Oyster Sauce. Cook mashed garlic, onion and brussels sprouts in a wok then add chopped green beans and sliced carrots. Then sprinkle the vegetables with oyster sauce, soy sauce, sesame oil and fish sauce. Season with a pinch of black pepper then add the egg noodles. Add pepper, oyster sauce, fish sauce, soy sauce or sesame oil to taste.
Once cooked, scoop the noodles and vegetables into large bowls. You can drizzle the remaining oyster sauce marinade for added flavor, then sprinkle the noodles with sesame seeds.
Fish in Chinese is called yú which sounds like “surplus” in Chinese; it represents prosperity and are usually served whole. A simple but flavorful way to serve fish is to rub it with salt and stuff the interior with ginger and scallion disks from the bottom of the leek. For added flavor, you can also place the fish on a plate with a bed of leek disks. Steam the fish in a large shallow pan. Once it’s cooked, top with sautéed leeks and ginger, then pour soy sauce to taste.
End your meal on a sweet note by making Chinese egg tarts – create a custard with salt, eggs, granulated sugar and evaporated milk, then heat and stir the mixture on the stove until the sugar dissolves. Let it cool then fill your muffin-sized crust with the custard and bake.
Cooking a Chinese New Year’s Eve feast does not have to be a tedious task with Electrolux kitchen appliances. The NutriFresh Inverter French Door Refrigerator EHE5220AA comes with a FreshShield Crisper that has a unique tight seal to keep temperatures stable, minimize water loss and provide higher humidity so that fruits and vegetables stay fresh for up to 7 days.
If you are looking for a cooking range, check out the Electrolux Induction Cooking Range EKI64500OX. It not only comes with a spacious layout to help you prepare multiple dishes at once, but also has powerful induction zones for speedy cooking and precision heat control that allows you to create perfectly-cooked dishes.
Of course, to keep your home smoke and odour-free, equip your kitchen with the Electrolux Slimline Hood EFT9510X, which will absorb all the grease and cooking fumes while recirculating indoor air.
To get the full recipes of these dishes, download the Electrolux Life app on the App Store or Google Play Store and click ‘Recipe Finder Powered by SideChef’ within the Electrolux Life app to access thousands of global recipes from SideChef’s database, step-by-step video and photo guidance, voice assisted cooking and much more.
For suggestions on delicious Chinese New Year Dishes for the Year of the Pig, please visit www.electrolux.com.ph.
Electrolux shapes living for the better by reinventing taste, care and wellbeing experiences making life more enjoyable and sustainable for millions of people. As a leading global appliance company, we place the consumer at the heart of everything we do. Through our brands, including Electrolux, White-Westinghouse, AEG, Anova, Frigidaire, and Zanussi, we sell more than 60 million household and professional products in more than 150 markets every year. In 2016, Electrolux had sales of SEK 121 billion and employed 55,000 people around the world.