Between throwing mandarin oranges into the sea on Chinese Valentine’s Day, and indulging in chocolate treats on the original Valentine’s Day, I choose the latter.  All the single ladies can have their wish; I’ll take the chocolate.

Throw a mandarin orange into the sea, and maybe your true love will find it bobbing along a distant shore, and set out on a journey to find you.

Today is the 15th day – the last day – of Chinese New Year.  It is known as Chap Goh Meh or Yuanxiao Festival 元宵节.  But In Malaysia and Singapore, this day also marks Chinese Valentine’s Day.

You’re sitting in a cavernous room of a Chinese banquet restaurant, surrounded by chatty aunties and uncles, some asking about your personal life, others telling you every detail about theirs.  The entire extended family is there, gathered together to celebrate Chinese New Year.  The meal has been endless.   Course after course of extravagant dishes of steamed grouper, sea cucumber, crispy skin chicken, abalone, lotus root, deep-fried shrimp balls, scallop and mushroom.  You can’t possibly eat anymore, and then the waitress brings one more dish before dessert – a giant plate of fried rice.

It’s the filler.  For anyone at the table who might still be hungry, they can stuff themselves with the cheap dish.

I may never appreciate fried rice after dinner, but I do think the dish deserves more respect.  There is a skill in making fried rice, and if presented nicely – say in a pineapple – it can look just as elaborate.

Pineapples and murder?

From prosperity in the East to hospitality in the West, the pineapple is a positive symbol around the world.  But when I was a child, the pineapple symbolized mystery and murder.

Chinese New Year dishes are as delicious as they are auspicious and symbolic. Long noodles for longevity. Whole fish, with head and tail, for a good beginning and ending to the New Year. The sweet and layered Nian Gao 年糕 (Chinese New Year cake) for a sweet, rich year, with layers of growing abundance. Whole chicken for family togetherness. Chinese gold ingot shaped wontons for a year of wealth.

Just as the appearance and ingredients of a Chinese New Year dish have a special meaning attached, so does the sound of the Chinese word for it. In Penang, where we speak a mix of Chinese dialects (Mandarin, Hokkien, Cantonese, and more), these play on words and sounds are extracted from multiple languages, as is the case with a dish I just cooked up - Pineapple Prawns.

On the fifth day of Chinese New Year, my true love gave to me, five golden dumplings...

Today is Dumpling Day 饺子 - the fifth day of the Spring Festival.  It is a day of prosperity and good fortune, symbolized with dumplings in the shapes of Chinese gold ingots and money bags.  The more you eat, the more well-off you are destined to be in the New Year.

Reduces anxiety and stress, settles an upset stomach, soothes a sore throat, suppresses a cough, helps prevent morning sickness and motion sickness and sea sickness, lowers cholesterol and blood pressure, warms the body and boosts circulation, treats inflammation, strengthens the gastrointestinal tract, suppresses certain cancer cells, relieves pain caused by arthritis and rheumatism, and according to Simon Cowell – who consumes it in tea form “all day long” – Ginger is what keeps him young and healthy despite his hectic schedule.

Love him or hate him, no one can argue with Simon on the powerful effects of ginger.