Happy Chinese New Year - Year of the Tiger!

Tomorrow is Chinese New Year and since I'm both away from my family's celebration and married to someone who's always eager to learn more about my culture, I thought I would put together a nice dinner for two. 

So with tangerines bought (to symbolize wealth and prosperity) and lots of red and gold accessories (colours symbolizing happiness, wealth, and good fortune), I set out to find ingredients to celebrate the year of the tiger. 

Getting last minute tickets to the Martha Stewart show was fortuitous as the show was all about Chinese New Year:  ideas on table setting (seen above with lots of circles meaning heaven and squares representing earth), flower arrangements, and  of course, recipes.

For both the noodle dish and the fish dish below, I substituted the Chinese rice wine for gin (suggested from this article).  It worked well as both dishes still tasted pretty good.

For the fish dish, I made a sauce with the ingredients at left.  As I learned from reading the blog Rasa Malaysia (which incidentally, is a great resource for Chinese cuisine recipes), the secret to that addictive sauce in fish dishes is rock sugar.

Whole fish is always served for New Year's because it symbolizes prosperity.  It is cooked and served with head and tail intact because it represents completeness (plus we both find fish tastier when cooked whole).  I cooked the striped bass (covered with the above fish sauce and stuffed with ginger and scallions) in the oven and served it with more ginger and cilantro leaves on top.