Chinese New Year is upon us, and it’s the Year of the Rat. Or, in my case, the Year of the Pack Rat, making me glad for once that my filing cabinet bulges with menus from memorable dinners such as the three New Year’s banquets at three different restaurants that sent us out into the night with good wishes filling our hearts in the same way the food had filled our bellies. One year, the deep-fried crab claws symbolized “lucky stars shining on all”, and the next, “houseful of gold”. Fried glutinous rice, depending on the restaurant, stood for a “houseful of gold and silver” or “harmony and prosperity”. A dish of stuffed chicken wings was poetically translated as “the dragon dances with the phoenix”. There are minor differences in translation, but essentially the menus follow the same pattern.

In Vancouver, people celebrate the New Year in various ways. Like many Canadians born elsewhere, Conrad Leung has embraced the food of his adopted country. Although he is head of the Asian culinary arts department at Vancouver Community College and the author of a Chinese-food textbook, he doesn’t cook Chinese fare at home. Last night, he says, he made spaghetti with meat sauce.

“I’ve been in this country for 33 years,” he says. “Christmas is more important [than Chinese New Year]. My kids are ‘bananas’. They’re not too crazy about Chinese food.” Still, he and his family will be going out for New Year’s dinner. His speed dial includes Kirin (various locations), Shi-Art Chinese Cuisine (1302–6551 No. 3 Road, Richmond Centre Mall), and Sea Harbour Seafood Restaurant (3711 No. 3 Road, Richmond); the latter, he likes for its squab and live rock cod. A phone call to Sea Harbour reveals four different New Year’s menus, all for 10 people, from $438 to $1,088, as well as individual dishes ($14.80 to $42.80) with names like Four Seasons Safety.

Leung grew up in Hong Kong, where his mother and grandmother cooked at New Year’s, usually braised pork hocks. Home and commercial cooking are different, he says, because of the kitchen equipment—a commercial stove can pump out 150,000 Btu, but a home stove is only capable of a maximum of 5,000. Theoretically, he could be serving pork hocks at the VCC cafeteria, but he won’t be. Leung imagines the reactions of students, especially non-Asians, to this traditional New Year’s dish: “No thank you.”

The pork hocks at home were made with sea moss, he says, because fat choy (sea moss) sounds like “making money”. Gung hay is a homonym for “best wishes”. Combine them and you have the traditional Chinese New Year greeting.

Vancouver food writer Stephanie Yuen will definitely be incorporating fat choy as she re-creates the feasts her mother made when Yuen was growing up in Hong Kong. “That’s for New Year’s Eve,” she emphasizes. “On New Year’s Day, we’re supposed to go vegetarian. A tribute to the animals we eat all year long.” Childhood celebrations, says Yuen, always involved a dish of pig’s trotters. She still makes them, boiling them in a soup and then browning them with ginger and garlic before braising until tender. “I use fermented tofu made with red beans to season the feet,” she says. “Very, very intense.”

About 35 people are slated to sit down at the Yuen family table on February 6 to consume 10 different dishes. “A lot of people make eight [dishes],” Yuen says, being that eight is equated with luck in Chinese culture. She prepares two whole fish, “tilapia or whatever’s available”, and lays various sausages on top of the rice in her rice cooker, a tradition she says dates back to when eating meat was, for impoverished farmers, a once-a-year event. As for what to make for a New Year’s feast, “There are all sorts of dishes,” Yuen concludes, “but it has to mean something.” For example, the dish she invented of tofu pockets stuffed with seasoned pork and fish. She says that, pan-fried and braised, they look like gold coins.

Sandra Creighton, another former Hong Konger, says she’s a bad cook so, as marketing manager for T & T Supermarket (various locations), she goes to the source for take-out dishes. You can too, if you preorder by Friday (February 8), at least two days in advance of pickup. At www.tnt-supermarket.com/, you’ll find a downloadable brochure with pictures and bilingual descriptions. Ordering three dishes (one feeds 10 as part of a multicourse meal, or two extremely greedy people) gets you a handsome set of free stainless-steel chopsticks.