Holiday Recipes

This is the one dish that really exemplifies Chinese New Year yet it is one that we rarely ate. I asked my mother recently why we never really had it and she answered that it was because when my mum was growing up after the war, her mother was left a widow. The family's previous wealth was drastically cut so that they no longer lived a life of luxury and meals such as this were no longer featured on their table. As a result, she never really prepared it for us as she rarely had it herself while she was growing up. Couple that with my father's reluctance to eat anything raw and it wasn't until recently that we started to eat and make this salad. Yee Sang salad symbolises abundance, prosperity and good health and is eaten on Renri, the seventh day of the Chinese New Year which is on the 20th of February this year although people eat it throughout the New Year period.