Delicious Yee Sang at Han City Restaurant in Ipoh on the first day of Chinese New Year.
Among the delicious Chinese New Year dishes, my favourites are the hou si fatt choy, fish maw soup and yee sang. Hou si fatt choy is a dish of braised dried oysters, black moss and shitake mushrooms. I cannot take too much of the hou si fatt choy because of my diet. However, I make up for that by feasting on yee sang. This dish is only available during the Chinese New Year.
Yee sang is a dish of raw fish (usually salmon slices), julienned jelly fish, chillies, raw, kaffir lime leaves, papayas, carrots turnips, pickled ginger, sesame seeds together with crispy yam and vermicelli, crushed peanuts and other ingredients. Lime juice is added to marinate fish slices. Plum sauce and sesame oil is added last after which diners use chopsticks to toss the ingredients to mix them well. The act of tossing is called “lou hei” which is the homophone of rising propserity.
Yee sang is eaten on yan yat which falls the seventh day of the first month in the Chinese calendar. This is the day when humans were created according to Chinese legends. Yee sang sounds like growing abundance and Chinese love to eat anything with an auspicious sounding name. On the other hand, I like it because it is tasty and only available this time of the year.
However, the exclusivity of eating yee sang on yan yat is lost to commercial concerns. Supermarkets were displaying packed yee sang for sale one month before Chinese New Year. Many restaurants already had yee sang in the menu two weeks before the New Year. We had yee sang during the reunion dinner (tuan yuan fan) and New Year lunch (kai nian fan) in Ipoh, and another when we celebrated the occasion on the third day with William, Cynthia and Emily in Kuala Lumpur. Nevertheless, I am going to drag Wuan to another yee sang for dinner later. Today is after all the day for yee sang.
When I was kid, I never tried Yee Sang due to the raw fish. I had my first taste of Yee Sang a few years ago. I like the crunchy parts except that I found it to be too sweet.
I have never tried the salmon Yee Sang. It sounds delicious.
Peter:
I like the crispy stuff too. The sweetness may be due to the sauce. Yee sang from different restaurants tastes different. Look for one that you like. Most of the yee sang here comes with salmon. It does not make the yee sang taste any better, just more expensive only.