The earliest memories of the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner began when I was 6 or 7 years old. It was the early 80s of the last century. Dad is the master of the canteen of the unit.
In my memory, my father only cooks one meal at home all year round, which is the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner. Usually, my mother and my sister cook three meals a day. The reason why he doesn't like to cook at home is: "I'm tired of cooking three meals in the canteen of the unit, and I don't want to touch the stove anymore when I get home." ”
However, on Chinese New Year's Eve, he must personally go out and cook a sumptuous Chinese New Year's Eve dinner.
My mother was still ten days before Chinese New Year's Eve, and began to prepare for the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner: braised pork, braised pig's head, boiled beef, boiled pork skin and meat jelly, fried beef meatballs. She also learned from the southerners how to make mash from rice. At that time, there will be a popular dessert on the table of the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner - mash rice balls.
At that time, I liked to watch my dad make sand mutton. It is a dish made with lamb and eggs. Chop the lamb into a filling. Spread the egg mixture into egg skins.
Sandwich the minced meat in the egg skin, cut it into diamond shapes, and fry it in a pan. Fried to golden brown, just fished out of the oil pan, we children around the pot didn't care about burning their mouths, they couldn't wait to grab a piece of sand and send it to their mouths. Hot, crispy on the outside and tender on the inside, just one word - "fragrant".
Sandy lamb gradually disappeared from the table of Chinese New Year's Eve dinner, first, this dish is very laborious and troublesome to make, and new dishes such as large plates of chicken gradually rise on the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner table, and traditional dishes such as sandwich lamb slowly withdraw from the historical stage of Chinese New Year's Eve dinner. Besides, after my father died, my sisters and I didn't make this dish anymore.
This year, with the help of the almighty Douyin teacher, my sister successfully restored the Jiasha mutton, and I tasted the taste of my childhood that I had not seen for a long time.
However, when Chinese New Year's Eve was cooking Chinese New Year's Eve, he forgot to take out the fried sand in the refrigerator to make it. After eating, my mother remembered that she forgot to stew in the sand. She kept sighing and saying it was a pity.
In those years, the dishes of the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner were almost the same, and they could be counted with their eyes closed. Cold dishes are mainly a variety of marinated products: braised beef, braised pig's trotters, cold pork ears, pork jelly, cold noodles, preserved eggs.
The hot dishes mainly include spicy chicken, sand, stewed meatballs, braised hairtail, button meat, fried roast mutton, stir-fried meat with fungus, stir-fried meat with mushrooms and so on.
The pork fried with mushrooms or fungus should be marinated with starch and seasoning in advance, and after a little oil, it is used to stew the fungus or mushrooms, and the pork slices taste tender and delicious.
In the early 80s, there were no greenhouse vegetables, and I couldn't buy fresh vegetables for the New Year. The mushrooms used for stir-frying meat are canned mushrooms, with small poles and umbrella lids, which are smooth and delicious in the mouth. Canned mushrooms are usually reluctant to buy, and only one can can is bought during the New Year throughout the year to add luster to the Chinese New Year's Eve meal.
Dad is very particular about making fried meat with fungus and mushrooms, and when the dish is about to be fried, it should be thickened with starch, so that the dish is good-looking, and there is a bright and viscous soup.
At that time, there were no greenhouse vegetables, and I couldn't buy fresh vegetables for the Chinese New Year. The vegetarian dish of the Chinese New Year's Eve meal is the sour and spicy shredded potatoes that you never get tired of eating.
The eternal dessert on the Chinese New Year's Eve rice is the eight-treasure rice steamed with red dates, raisins, lard, sugar and glutinous rice, and no one in my memory does not like this dish, and generally after the Chinese New Year's Eve meal, the plate of the eight-treasure rice is empty.
Shredded potatoes are also a popular hot dish on the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner table. The potatoes are fried until they are soft and coated in a layer of sugar shell, and the taste is wonderful.
Dad's unit will give out benefits every year for the Chinese New Year, usually all kinds of New Year's goods, and I remember that they would usually share fish. One year, I even divided frozen crabs. Although it smells fishy and there is not much crab roe left, it is extremely rare for us.
That year, crabs appeared on the dinner table for the first time on Chinese New Year's Eve. That was the first time I had eaten something as rare as crabs. After steaming, the crab gives off a unique aroma. Although there is really no meat to eat on the crab, I still cherish it and lick the remaining crab roe from the crab shell. After that time, I was impressed by the taste of crab.
At the end of the 80s, greenhouse vegetables originated in Shandong and later spread to Xinjiang, and peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, small greens, beans, garlic sprouts, zucchini, and other vegetables that could only be eaten in summer began to appear on the table of my family's Chinese New Year's Eve dinner.
Although we unanimously commented, these greenhouse vegetables did not have the taste they should have at all, such as the beans are not rotten, and the core inside the tomatoes is not only hard, but also white in color. Zucchini fried into a pot of water, cucumbers do not have cucumber taste, but everyone still compromised, although these out-of-season dishes wrapped in a quilt basket are extremely expensive, adults will not hesitate to buy them home and become vegetarian dishes on the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner table.
Nowadays, Chinese New Year's Eve rice is becoming more and more rich in vegetarian dishes, chrysanthemum, broccoli, snow peas, lettuce, ...... These dishes are not rare at all, and you can usually eat them whenever you want. Because the family is more and more advocating eating literacy, they are naturally indispensable on the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner table.
Later, Xinjiang gave rise to large plates of chicken, and for several years, they became indispensable protagonists on the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner table. However, the success of the large plate chicken depends largely on the quality of the chicken, and if you can't buy your own local chicken in the countryside, the taste of this dish will be greatly reduced.
After my father died, the baton of making the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner was handed over to our sisters. My mother has to worry about the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner every year before the New Year, for fear that it will not be rich. Therefore, every year after eating Chinese New Year's Eve, I have to ask her if she is rich? Full of dissatisfaction? My mother smiled every year and said that she was very satisfied and rich.
After 2000, the whole country began to rise to eat Chinese New Year's Eve dinner in hotels, after all, eating in hotels saves the fatigue of preparation, and it is also a fresh experience for us. We finally convinced my mom to have a Chinese New Year's Eve dinner at the hotel. But my mother said that after eating at the hotel, everyone went back to their respective homes, and there was less atmosphere for the New Year.
After that, the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner was still eaten at home. The variety of Chinese New Year's Eve rice is becoming more and more abundant, and shrimp, shrimp tails, jellyfish, golden pomfret, sausage, cashew nuts, lilies, pepper and sesame chicken are added.......
In the past, wine was indispensable on the dinner table on Chinese New Year's Eve. I remember that from the age of 5 or 6, our children can also drink a teacup of wine at the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner, which is produced in Turpan, sweet and silky, especially delicious, and after drinking, dizzy.
The drinks for the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner also follow the trend of the year, small champagne, sparkling wine, Hans cabin, milk beer, orange, Huiyuan juice. This year, considering that my mom has diabetes, I bought her a sugar-free Coca-Cola.
When the brothers-in-law were young, they were able to drink some baijiu more or less, but as they grew older and were affected by illness, they drank less and less baijiu. No one drank it this year.
In the past 40 years, my family's Chinese New Year's Eve dinner has undergone so many changes, but the only thing that has not changed is the joy and happiness when the family is reunited and sitting together.