CNY Lo Hei: Auspicious Salmon Yu Sheng (发财鱼生)

Lo Hei or Prosperity Toss, originally is a Teochew-style Raw Fish Salad. It usually consists of strips of raw fish, example the Salmon, & shredded vegetables like Radish, Carrots, Red Pepper (Capsicum), Turnips, Red Pickled Ginger, Lime leaves, Chilli.

Sauces & other ingredients include Plum sauce, Vinegar, Kumquat paste & Sesame oil; Sun-dried Orange, Jellyfish, Chopped Peanuts, Sesame Seeds, Chinese Shrimp Crackers, Five Spice Powder etc.

(Recipe Featured @ OMY-食天堂Eat)

The Yu Sheng dish is considered a symbol of abundance, vitality & prosperity due to its homophone for Yúshēng (余升), meaning an increase in abundance. Hence, the appetizer is taken during festive seasons such as the Chinese New Year, symbolizing "Good Luck" for the new year.

Now, here’s the interesting part if you haven’t taken the Yu Sheng. It’s like a game played during the special occasion. Normally in restaurants, the waiter will have to utter auspicious wishes as each ingredient is added. All diners then stand up & on cue, proceed to toss the shredded ingredients into the air with chopsticks while shouting auspicious words. The higher the better, diners are expected to toss fervently! It’s believed that the height of the toss reflects the diner's growth in fortune!

Here’s a pix taken by a Japanese friend. 3 visitors from Japan joined us for My Chinese New Year Feasts this year. As the “thumb of rule” above, diners are expected to stand up when tossing the salad. But if you don’t wanna end up having a big mess on your dining table since this is only the 1st course, I suggest having the diners seated. Bet you can imagine the mess especially with my mischievous teenage son there if all of us stood up to “play”. Lol!

Typically, here’s how Yu Sheng looks like. But I decided to do something fanciful with the dish & did these for three different groups of guests with some changes to the ingredients:

Day 1: Auspicious Salmon Yu Sheng with Jellyfish

Chinese character 福 means Fortune or Prosperity

Day 2: Auspicious Salmon Yu Sheng with Jellyfish

Chinese character 吉 means Lucky or Auspicious

Day 3: Lucly Koi Abalone Yu Sheng with Jellyfish

If you wanna know what the Koi fish represents, check out my

Lucky Koi Mango Pudding (吉祥錦鯉芒果布丁)

So, what do you think of my Yu Sheng? Do they look like portraits you can hang on your wall? Hahaha! Warning: You’ve got to be patient. It took me about 2hrs to make the 1st portrait!

Recipe Featured @ AsiaFood Recipe's Fan Page

Recipe Spotted @ Tasting Spot, together with my
Lucky Koi Mango Pudding (吉祥錦鯉芒果布丁)

Use your creativity to make the dish. Add any ingredients you want. I ran out of Salmon on the 3rd day, so I replaced it with Abalone. Simply shred the Abalone so there’s adequate to go around. And when I ran out of Green Pickled Nutmeg, I substituted it with Kelp. Enough being said, come & take a peep at what I did:

Ingredients (11 x 15 Cake Base):
1 pkt (75g) of Smoked Salmon
150g Jellyfish
1 Carrot
½ Radish
50g Green Pickled Nutmeg
50g Red Pickled Ginger
30g Sun-dried Orange Peel
½ Lime
30g Crackers or Pok Chui Biscuits
5 tbsp Grounded Peanuts
50g Toasted Sesame Seeds
5 tbsp Sesame Oil
3 tbsp Plum Sauce

Method:

1. Peel & wash carrots & radish. Shred them & set aside. Line cake base with radish & nutmeg by rolling the vegetables. I started decorating with the left side first to help me gauge how big the character is gonna be. Then I worked on the word using the radish.

2. When the word is completed, lined the background with carrots & finish the other side with nutmeg & radish.

3. Next, line a row at the top with chopped peanuts.

4. Lined the base of the word with a row of sesame seeds, then another row with red ginger & orange peel. Complete it with Jellyfish.

5. Roll salmon into roses & add to the four sides of the board.

6. Surround the portrait with crackers. Use red ginger to form the strings & add the lime to act as a “thumb tack” for hanging the prosperity portrait!

Well, I do hope these lucky portraits will bring cheer & happiness to you in 2012!!