This weekend crowds will congregate in their new clothes to set off firecrackers and caper with lion dancers on the street. For some, Lunar New Year is prescribed, with specific times set aside for ancestor worship, family teas, and temple visits. Others take a free-and-easy approach, playing games, boozing and watching wrestling on TV. The only constant is the role that food plays, for not only is it abundant and delicious, but it is also imbued with symbolic meaning.
Many Irish friends associate Lunar New Year with boiled jiaozi dumplings, but these juicy ravioli-like packets are in fact limited to northern regions. Originally, a mountain of dumplings was made to last through the holiday, which in China lasts for more than a fortnight, this year coming to a close on February 12th. And in the days before refrigeration, the dumplings were stored in cellars and warehouses to freeze. For anyone residing in warmer climes, this was impractical.
Moving beyond the simple dumpling, there is a dazzling array of dishes that celebrate what is, for millions of people, the most important holiday of the year. Here is a selection of emblematic foods Asian communities in Ireland will be tucking into in the coming weeks to celebrate Lunar New Year 2025 – or the Year of the Snake.
Tteokguk (Korea)
Although the philosopher Confucius – whose Analects continue to inform the conduct of much of East Asia – was Chinese, the Koreans are the most observant of Confucian practices today. Nearly all, regardless of their religion, practice ancestor worship on Lunar New Year, which includes laying out a feast for the dead to honour them.
For Koreans, the most important meal is breakfast on New Year’s Day, of which tteokguk – rice dumplings (tteok) sliced into coin shapes and poached in a clear beef bone broth – is the uncontested star. Traditionally, the broth is pale, clear, but with considerable body, the meat and bones having been washed to remove impurities and left to simmer for sometimes days.
In Korea, it is said that each bowl of New Year’s tteokguk makes you one year older. Hence children try to gobble as many bowls of tteokguk as they can, while their elders’ consumption is understandably more restrained.
“When I was a boy, I tried to eat three or four bowls,” says Gunmoo Kim of Space Jaru, “Now, not so much.”
Both Kim and Vivian Cho, the chef-owner of Korean Table, grew up with a tteok factory in their neighbourhood, where, as children, they would collect the warm, plush-textured tteok on New Year’s morning. Kim recalls standing on the factory floor.
“The hot, cooked rice cake would come out, and the owner would cut the ends with scissors and give them to me to eat.” Nowadays, such tteok factories are rare, with people buying ready-made, pre-sliced tteok (which you can find in shops such as Han Sung, Coreana, and Asia Market) instead.
Cho garnishes her tteokguk with thinly sliced omelette, mandoo dumplings (similar to Chinese jiaozi), and pulled flank steak; she gives her broth heft with a ladle of liquid from her braised short ribs. Kim uses oxtail for his base and graces his version with a smattering of scallion and sesame oil.
Koreans favour white for Lunar New Year, with its connotations of purity and new beginnings. They eschew red – the favoured colour in China and many other countries – because for them, it represents death. Even Koreans’ most beloved staple, crimson-coloured kimchi, is often absent at New Year. At Space Jaru, Kim offers white kimchi, sparkling with ginger and sweetened lightly with pear.
- Korean Table, 50a Manor Street, Stoneybatter, Dublin 7, 085 127 5321
- Space Jaru, 67-68 Meath Street, The Liberties, Dublin 8; email: space@jaru.ie
Money and lumpia (China, the Philippines)
We Asians are unabashed about our love for cash, references to which abound at New Year. Among the money envelopes and gambling games, discs of tteok look like coins and dimpled dumplings evoke ingots. Gold is a popular colour, as in salted egg yolk, fruits such as oranges and satsumas, and winter squashes and pumpkin.
This January, China Sichuan in Sandyford, whose annual New Year banquet menu offers playful contemporary riffs on the classics, has a gold and white jade soup – an alabaster dumpling surrounded by a blazing butternut squash bisque.
Due to its resemblance to a bar of gold, another Lunar New Year favourite is the spring roll. The Filipino iteration is called lumpia – cigarillo-slender with a filling redolent of garlic and laced with carrot (which, being gold-coloured, is also lucky) and a delightfully brittle shell. Happily, Richie Castillo of Bahay will be selling them at the Lunar New Year celebration at Dublin’s Meeting House Square on Sunday, February 9th.
Castillo also consults at Kaldero, which year-round serves “dynamite” lumpia, another Filipino version stuffed with whole green chillies and cheese.
- Bahay @ Dublin Lunar New Year flagship event, Meeting House Square, February 9th, 12-6pm
- China Sichuan, The Forum, Ballymoss Rd, Sandyford Business Park, Sandyford, Dublin 18, 01-2935100
- Kaldero, Unit 4B, Stephen’s Green Shopping Centre, King Street South, Dublin 2, 01-4782152
Poon cai (Hong Kong, Southern China, Singapore)
Lunar New Year is also about showing off the absolute best and, in much of Asia, nothing spells luxury like seafood, of which sea cucumber and abalone are especially coveted. (Crab, usually prized, is frowned upon because it walks backwards.)
No one dish shows off precious foodstuffs quite like poon cai, a dish that originates in Canton and Hong Kong, a tureen rife with roasted meats and the ocean’s most desirable bling. Abalone, sea cucumber, geoduck and shrimp are braised, nestled alongside roast duck, wild mushrooms, and char siu.
Galway’s Mama Rich will make a holiday poon cai with advance notice. Last year, they delivered poon cai to a customer who, like many Asians, preferred to enjoy a Lunar New Year’s feast at home.
- Mama Rich Flavours of Asia, Daly’s Place, 3 Woodquay, Galway, 091-450147
Fish & chicken from head to tail (Malaysia, Singapore, China)
The Chinese are fond of puns; their words for fish (yu) and chicken (ji) sound like “abundance,” and “fortune” respectively. For many, it is crucial to serve both whole during New Year, as it signifies unity. You can find whole fish in many Chinese restaurants in this season, such as the steamed sea bass at Good World’s New Year banquet hosted by Asia Market, or deep fried at China Sichuan in classic “chrysanthemum” style, its skin slashed so that it blossoms.
At chef Sham Hanifa’s family New Year, there were not just whole fish and chickens, but entire ducks that would surround the wild boar that his grand-uncle had shot. For Hanifa, of My Kitchen in Carrick-on-Shannon, Co Roscommon, the celebrations in his Malaysian hometown of Taiping were rollicking: praying in the mornings, then cooking, fireworks and gambling for the rest of the day. “Madness,” he chuckles.
Back in Ireland, Hanifa makes a nod to his family with pork belly (a tribute to his grand-uncle), steamed fish and chicken poached Hainan style. Poaching is the preferred method during New Year because it highlights the chicken’s freshness, and Hainan chicken, cooked until delicate and ivory-hued, is a virtuoso feat. Most sought-after, however, is the rice, sautéed with chicken fat and left to slowly swell in the bird’s juices.
- Good World Chinese Restaurant, 18 South Great George’s Street, Dublin 2, 01-6775373
- My Kitchen, Unit 12, Sligo Road, Cortober, Carrick Retail & Business Park, Co Roscommon, 071-9616360
Yee sang & hot pot (Malaysia, Singapore, China)
A common New Year dish in Malaysia and Singapore, yee sang (or in Mandarin Chinese yu sheng), means raw fish, and is a pun for “increased abundance”. Julienned raw vegetables and sashimi are arranged in attractive piles like colours on a painter’s palette, and each diner has a turn mixing the ingredients. Yee sang, like many New Year dishes, requires group participation.
It is laborious to prepare but fun for diners to finish, which is why, during a holiday so often celebrated at home, it is frequently a restaurant dish. Known in English as prosperity toss, yee sang can be ordered ahead at Eatzen in Ashbourne, Co Meath and at Mama Rich in Galway, where owner-chef Rebecca Lau uses smoked salmon.
Hot pot is a popular dish for the New Year for the same reason as yee sang; what gives both dishes importance is that you make them together. In hot pot, various meats, vegetables and noodles are sliced paper-thin, julienned, skewered, or shaped into croquettes. A pot of broth simmers at the table for the diners to dip and cook the ingredients, which can include fresh, crisp baby corn and okra, dumplings, crinkled tofu yuba sheets, and fish cakes. It’s often a messy affair, but everyone giggles when the broth splashes.
You can experience hot pot at Lao and also in the recently opened Shu Jiu Xiang restaurant on Dublin’s Capel Street.
- Eatzen, 1 Killegland Crescent, Killegland, Ashbourne, Co Meath, 01-8352110
- Lao Chinese and Korean BBQ Restaurant, Rotunda, Parnell Street, Dublin 1 01-8736666
- Shu Jiu Xiang SJX Chengdu Restaurant, 48 Capel Street, Dublin 1, (01) 561 2729
Niangao, tangyuan and sticky rice sweets (China & elsewhere)
For a celebratory dessert, you would be hard pressed to find a Lunar New Year without some confection made from glutinous “sweet” or “sticky” rice, as Asians find its clinging texture and its caramel and vanilla perfume irresistible. For me, sticky rice is more tempting than chocolate, whether steamed in a pudding studded with dried fruits, chestnuts and honey, coated in sesame seeds and fried, or stuffed with peanut and adzuki pastes.
For many Chinese, the New Year dessert is nian gao, literally “new year cake”, a mochi-like confection made from brown sugar and sweet rice flour. Although at its best when fresh, soft and warm, one way to reactivate this cake’s unctuousness is by dipping slices in egg and browning them in a pan. Each slice has a molten core that stretches into taffy-like strings that tangle in your teeth. “Like Chinese French toast,” jokes Richie Castillo, who knows nian gao by the Filipino name, takoy.
You can buy nian gao and other sticky rice treats at Chinese markets such as Oriental Emporium or the always reliable Asia Market. Better yet, queue for handmade coconut nian gao at Hong Kong Taste Bakery.
While tangyuan, sweet rice dumplings, are eaten in China throughout the holiday, they are especially important on the 15th and final day, the Lantern Festival – their round shape hearkening to the togetherness of family and loved ones. It’s a dish that makes me nostalgic for times when I would be perched at the counter with my family, stuffing thimbles of black sesame paste into walnut-size tangyuan balls, which we would cook in lightly fermented sweet rice wine (jiuniang).
You can find tangyuan at Hong Kong Wonton, with ginger syrup. At Nan Chinese, chef Ran Qiwan gilds his version with just a hint of pumpkin, local to the countryside around Chongqing, where he grew up. The tender morsels of Ran’s tangyuan, bobbing in a floral jiuniang made silken with whisked egg, brings me back to my childhood winters.
- Oriental Emporium, 30/32 Abbey Street Upper, Dublin 1
- Asia Market, 18 Drury Street, Dublin 2; Merrywell Business Park, Ballymount Road Lower, Dublin 12
- Hong Kong Taste Bakery, 21 Eden Quay, Dublin 1, 087-1007243
- Nan Chinese, Unit 1, Drury Hall, Stephen Street Lower, Dublin 2, 01-5169887
More than luck and money, Lunar New Year emphasises togetherness, co-operation and loved ones.
“It’s why we have soup,” muses Gunmoo Kim, remembering a Lunar New Year dawn he spent with a best friend on Jeju Island. “The men who were there had prepared a big pot of tteokguk, and were giving it to random people. For me that was the perfect New Year Day, watching the sun rise and sharing tteokguk that had been made by someone else.”
This is why, even in households where the women continue to do the bulk of the cooking, everyone pitches in, whether it is making hot pot, tang yuan, or dumplings. Vivien Cho vividly remembers men rolling mandoo dumpling dough, while children cut circles with a tea-kettle lid, and women tucked the filling inside.
There is perhaps a misty-eyed longing when one compares the past to more affluent times, with mom-and-pop shops replaced by supermarkets selling New Year foods ready-made. Even the bliss of wearing new clothes – a common New Year custom – is diminished by the fact that now you can buy clothes any day.
But Cho says that before the modern kitchen, every Korean housewife’s back was permanently hunched from stooping over an old-fashioned brazier. “This is why there are so many divorces during New Year,” she says with a mischievous twinkle. “Imagine cooking all day while the men drink, and often in your mother-in-law’s kitchen.”
“The most delicious New Year dish when I was a child?” Ren Qiwan wonders. “You have to understand we were so poor. Anything tasted good.”
Still, he brightens when he remembers the lion and boat dancers on the streets. “Maybe it’s the New Year’s spirit that is important.”
Maybe Ren is right. This holiday, we could be tucking into a Ming dynasty tureen of poon cai or sipping on the humblest of gruels. New Year foods are significant, but it is how we eat them that counts: joyfully and as one.
