On the first day of Chinese New Year, many Chinese families choose to abstain from meat, often opting to tuck into vegetarian meals instead. Eschewing meat in favour of vegetables dates back to an old Buddhist practice, upheld by Buddhist monks, which promotes the idea that nothing living should be sacrificed on the first day of the new year.
Consequently, vegetable consumption on the first day of CNY is seen as a form of self-purification, and a cleansing of both the body and the soul, as well as a way of enhancing longevity.
While not all Chinese households continue to preserve this tradition, some do, often coming up with elaborate vegetable-centric culinary rituals and recipes to sustain the interests and appetites of their families on this auspicious day.
Treasured family heritage
In the Wong family home in Sungai Buloh, family members are clustered around the dining table. Packets of mushrooms are being unburdened from their plastic packaging and tossed into large containers.
The table is littered with a cornucopia of chopping boards, knives and child-friendly scissors as each person in the family takes up a corner and begins the tedious work of prepping and cutting all the ingredients required for the Wongs’ heirloom vegetarian dish of Lor Hon Jai (Buddha’s Delight), a traditional Buddhist dish made up of many different kinds of mushrooms and other assorted ingredients cooked in a rich sauce enhanced with Shaoxing wine.
Seated at the centre of this hubbub is 101-year-old Lum Choy Kok, affectionately called Poh Poh by her grandchildren. Lum’s cognisance is fading a little, but she has a warm smile at the ready for all her grandchildren and great-grandchildren. It is clear that when it comes to matters related to the kitchen, she is still on the ball as she peers in concentration at a packet of mushrooms, clearly trying to deduce if her grandchildren have done a bang-up job of selecting the fresh produce she was once responsible for purchasing.
“She is from Guangzhou and she left home when she was seven years old. So I think she probably learnt how to make Lor Hon Jai when she married my father, who is also a migrant from Guangzhou, because I know all my dad’s sisters used to make it as well, ” says Lum’s daughter Alice Wong.
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Interestingly, Lum nearly single-handedly did all the cooking for Chinese New Year until the ripe old age of 90, often cooking for three days straight. When she turned 90, Alice realised that the effort required for Lum to cook for those three days often meant she needed to rest and recuperate for another three days, as she was getting weary with old age. So she roped in her children to take over the cooking duties.
“Actually it was my mum’s decision to get all of us to help and take over the tradition of cooking this vegetarian dish on the eve of CNY, ” says Alice’s son Nicholas.
“The shopping used to be done by me and my grandmother. When we started helping out more than 10 years ago, I would bring her to the markets and she would tell me what to buy, ” adds Nicholas.
After Nicholas and his brother Bruce started actively getting involved in making the family’s Lor Hon Jai, they began roping in their wives and children to help too over the years and the activity gradually became a huge family affair.
While Lum played an active supervisory post for the first five years, conducting and watching over the proceedings, she has since relinquished her role completely in the last five years.
These days, the brothers and their two other siblings who live in Singapore with their families always return to the family home in time for the eve of Chinese New Year to complete the ritual of making the vegetarian dish.
“My grandma says it is a must to come home on the eve of CNY. Once we are home, we make the dish so that on the first day of CNY, everybody gets to eat this, ” says Bruce.
For the past 10 years, the family has typically made up to 12 large pots of Lor Hon Jai every year. The volume is both to feed their own large extended family as well as to satiate Lum’s friends and other family members who come to visit.
Over the years, they have also started donating portions of the Lor Hon Jai to orphanages and old folks’ homes as well, a practice that isn’t just limited to Chinese New Year, as they now get together twice a month to make pots of Lor Hon Jai to donate to people in need.Still keeping to traditions
This year, like many other families, the Wong clan’s CNY rituals will be far more subdued. To begin with, Nicholas and Bruce’s brother and sister in Singapore won’t be able to travel to Malaysia to partake in the usual family traditions. Instead his sister – who is forlorn at missing the annual affair – has decided to host a Lor Hon Jai party in her home instead.
“My sister called us to ask for the full recipe. She is normally in charge of cutting the ingredients, so she doesn’t actually know how to make the complete dish but she has decided to make it herself in Singapore, ” says Bruce.
The brothers will also be making a much smaller quantity of Lor Hon Jai this year, and consequently have decided to take orders from family members hankering after their signature dish, to minimise wastage.
“This year, we will be arranging for the Lor Hon Jai to be delivered to all our uncles and aunties as we can’t visit them, ” says Bruce.
Still, Bruce knows this is simply the new normal and in many ways, the smaller family get-together (less than 10 people instead of the usual 20) is still in keeping with all the old traditions. The clan will still congregate and start preparing the Lor Hon Jai early in the morning of Chinese new year eve, a process that will go on until nearly 3am in the morning, as everyone assumes roles ranging from cutting, packing, organising the contents in pots and cooking the dish.
“Since we were kids, my Poh Poh always told us that the later we sleep on CNY Eve, the longer our parents will live, so making the Lor Hon Jai gives us the ideal excuse to stay up late!” says Bruce, laughing.
Over the years, Nicholas and Bruce have also added their own twists to the heirloom recipe, adding more mushrooms into the mixture as well as fried gluten balls. They have also replaced the brandy that their grandmother favoured with Shaoxing wine instead.
The result of all that hard work is a sumptuous festive dish that ticks all the right boxes. Each mouthful offers the textural contrasts of different mushrooms juxtaposed against the flavours soaked into the gluten puffs. The sauce is also oh-so good – a live wire running riot with traces of ginger and Chinese wine. It’s the sort of meal that despite its simplicity – instantly charms and beguiles.
Which is why on the first day of CNY, Lor Hon Jai is all the family eats. There are no other side dishes, just this one dish that the entire family – both young and old – came together to make and eat.
Despite the work involved in pulling off their grandmother’s recipe year after year, Bruce and Nicholas remain committed to ensuring that the family’s long-standing ritual of making this dish remains sacrosanct and continues to be practised by their children too.
“It’s something to do as a family, it gets everybody together on the eve of CNY. If not, the adults are on their phones and the kids are watching TV. But if you have an activity for everybody to be involved in, everyone sits down and starts peeling and cutting everything and talking to each other.
“That’s why I enjoy this whole tradition – it is something I want my kids to learn, ” says Bruce.
For preparing first
- 150g old ginger, cut into slices
- 500g Chinese cabbage, sliced to desired size
- 150g button mushrooms, sliced
- 150g abalone mushrooms, sliced
- 150g enoki mushrooms, sliced
- 150g oyster mushrooms, sliced
- 100g straw mushrooms
- 100g brown beech mushrooms
- 100g white beech mushrooms
- 100g dried shiitake mushrooms, rehydrated by soaking in warm water and braising for 2 hours
- 75g dried lily buds, rehydrated by soaking in room temperature water, tie into single knot
- 35g dried black fungus, rehydrated and sliced to preferred size
- 5 pieces baby corn, rinsed and sliced
- 100g gingko nuts, peeled
- 20 pieces gluten balls, boiled in water to remove oil and rinsed in water
- 5 pieces beancurd sheets, sliced
- 3 tbsp Shaoxing wine
- sesame oil, to taste
- 50ml soy sauce
- 50g rock sugar
- 2 tsp sugar
- 2 tsp white pepper
- 1 cup water
To make
Prepare all the raw ingredients first. Once done, add cooking oil to a pre-heated wok over medium heat. Add ginger and cabbage and stir-fry till cabbage is tender.
Add all the fresh mushrooms, some Shaoxing wine and sesame oil. Stir-fry for 3 minutes. Add shiitake mushrooms, lily buds, black fungus, baby corn and gingko nuts and continue stir-frying for another 3 minutes.
Add fried gluten puffs, fried beancurd, soy sauce, rock sugar, sugar white pepper, 2 tbsp Shaoxing wine and stir-fry for 2 minutes. Add water, stir to combine and cover wok. Cook covered for 7 minutes, then remove cover and let simmer till reduced.
Serve with steamed rice and fermented beancurd.
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