Asian Christmas, 2011

Happy Holidays, everyone!

For the most part, traditional Chinese families don't serve the typical Christmas dinners, such as a roasted turkey and all its trimmings. Since my parents have been here for a really long time, my mom does make a really mean roast turkey and yummy stuffing when she feels like it. However, since this year we were entertaining guests that were more traditional Chinese, we decided to make an entirely Chinese Christmas meal.

Allow me to introduce to you a Chinese Christmas feast!

Spring rolls

Spring rolls a la mom. They contain ground pork, bean sprouts, sliced shitake mushrooms, and a whole bunch of other stuff. Much, much better than store-bought ones.

Salted fish

Deep fried salted fish. The fish are fried until the bones become crisp and crunchy.

Stir-fried short ribs

Stir-fried short ribs.

Wrapped shrimp

Wrapped shrimp. This is my mom's own invention. She mixes the shrimp with garlic and some other herbs, and then wraps them in these thin noodles that we found at an Arab supermarket (no, they're not vermicelli). She then brushes on a layer of butter and then bakes them. It's proven to be very popular with Asians and Caucasians alike!



Eight Treasure sticky rice



Eight Treasure Sticky Rice. This is a traditional Chinese dessert. My mom made a fusion version and put those candied fruits in it, as well as red bean paste.

Feast!

I was going to take more pictures, but my mom kicked me out of the kitchen. We also had 'general tao' pork, steamed buns and sliced pork, coral salad (yes, you read that right), pork stomach salad (sounds gross, tastes good), steamed egg rolls, steamed tofu skin rolls and various stir-fried veggies.

Blueberry cheesecake

To finish it all off, my mom made a blueberry cheesecake. Unlike conventional cheesecakes, this particular treat is thin and light. The cream cheese is mixed with whipped cream so that it's ligh and fluffy, and sandwiched in between the cream cheese and graham crumbs is a homemade blueberry sauce. This particular cheesecake isn't very sweet, since my mom cuts the amount of sugar, and is probably healthier than the regular stuff. Plus, it's delish!

So that's pretty much how my Christmas went. No turkey, but plenty of other foods to make up for it! Hope you all had a great Christmas, and a very happy New Year! See you on the other side. :)