"You do all your cleaning, change your carpets, paint your door red to attract spirits, you shower, cut hair, everything before New Year's Day," says chef Ming Tsai, a creator of the East-meets-West movement and author most recently of "Simply Ming: One-Pot Meals (Kyle, 2010). "You want everything prepped for the new year. It's like mise en place for the year."
But, most people are more accustomed to takeout boxes than to the intricacies of Chinese cooking. So here's a primer:
Balance, texture and presentation are integral to Chinese cooking. For example, sweet typically is paired with sour - a sort of yin and yang on the tongue - and most dishes contrast soft elements with crunchy ones.
"Good Chinese food always has smooth and crunchy," Tsai says. "There's always that contrast of texture in Chinese food." For instance, soft tofu or pliant noodles will be offset by crunchy cabbage or flash-fried meat.
And though the Japanese are credited with adding the word "umami" - which roughly translates as savory - to the mainstream culinary lexicon, the flavor also is indispensable to Chinese cuisine. Umami-rich ingredients, such as hoisin and soy sauce, are indispensible in Chinese cooking.
Presentation - or how the food reaches the senses other than taste - also is critical. The sizzle of a hot platter announces its arrival to the table. A beautiful plating, such as soup served in a whole melon or a fish stood on its side, adds a dramatic visual note. And then there is aroma.
"Fragrance is very important to the Chinese," says cooking instructor Eileen Yin-Fei Lo, author of a dozen Chinese cookbooks. "When you cook a dish, if you don't have nice fragrance, people will never return."
