A recipe for luck

By now, the dumplings should be ready to pan fry or slip into boiling water; the chicken bought live in Chinatown has been dressed for roasting; the black moss seaweed is on hand, along with black or shiitake mushrooms. When the Chinese New Year begins tomorrow, ushering in the Year of the Monkey, a holiday season of feasting begins -- with purpose. Although most holidays feature special dishes, Chinese families take it one step further, eating certain foods to bring wealth, happiness, and good fortune.

Many of these banquet-style meals take place in restaurants, some at home, with everyone in the family pitching in to cook. Vicki Lee and her nephew Ken Lee of Newton attend family feasts at home, presided over by Vicki's mother and father, both born in China. "My parents are in their 80s and very traditional," says Vicki Lee.

Others mark the event with big, communal restaurant feasts. Kaela Lee (no relation to Vicki Lee) of Cambridge, a dancer and mother of two small children, says annual dinners fulfill several purposes. "We go to Chinatown with my whole extended family," she says, to celebrate the holiday and her grandmother's birthday. Her father, Tunney Lee, an urban planner and architect who teaches at MIT, came from China as a boy, but his siblings moved to the United States later, bringing more of the old traditions with them. Once her aunts and cousins moved here, she says, they changed the way they celebrated. The gathering of 20 to 30 family members will fill several large round tables, Kaela Lee says, with the 10 great-grandchildren frolicking around. Celebrity Chef Ming Tsai, who remembers elaborate festivities while growing up, tries to keep customs alive in more modest ways. The chef and owner of Wellesley's Blue Ginger and host of the television series "Simply Ming," says Chinese New Year was "just as important as Christmas" when he was a kid in Dayton, Ohio. "We would feast out big time."

Preparations started days ahead, and the family got together on

New Year's eve to make hundreds of dumplings for the next day. The 10- to 12-course dinner would also include "the freshest live fish you could find in Dayton at the time," Tsai says. But his favorite was his father's red-cooked pork shoulder, marinated in soy sauce, ginger, rock candy, and red wine, then roasted for hours. For dessert the family made eight-treasure sticky rice with Grand Marnier. Tsai will feature a special menu at Blue Ginger (see related story on Page E3), but he doesn't prepare a banquet. "Times have changed," he says. He'll go with his family and friends to a Chinatown restaurant, probably New Shanghai. This year, his older son, David, who is 4, will get his first "red envelope" on New Year's day, a tradition of giving children money that is practiced in most families.

To talk about the foods and customs for the holiday, a group gathered at East Ocean City in Chinatown recently. As guests sampled a roast chicken and its crispy skin, Vicki Lee and Ken Lee explained the tradition: The feet and head must be on the bird, which represents wholeness from beginning to end, and will bring luck. Even the word for chicken signifies prosperity. The Lee family is Cantonese, and their customs also include a whole fish, head intact, for the same reason. "Nothing headless," Vicki Lee says.

Using chopsticks to pluck a clam in black bean sauce from its shell, cookbook author and North Shore resident Nina Simonds explains that shellfish such as clams and oysters represent "opening to good fortune." The author of "Spoonful of Ginger," "China Express," and other cookbooks, Simonds travels often to the Far East.

On the holiday, says Ken Lee, red banners wishing good luck will be used to decorate dining rooms. East Ocean is festooned 10 days early. "Red is very key," says Lee, because it's considered a lucky color.

Sweetness is also prized. "You have to bring a bag of oranges or tangerines" when going to a New Year's party, says Vicki Lee, and it must be an even-number of fruit. "But not four," chips in Ken Lee, because that's bad luck. Vegetables are often cut into coin shapes, says Simonds, and "Cantonese might stir-fry lettuce," both to signify money in the year ahead.

Wealth is also assured by eating luxurious ingredients, so this is the time for duck, says Simonds, the very best black mushrooms -- served whole and braised -- and choice seafood such as shark's fin or abalone.

Many foods are eaten because their names sound like a propitious word in Mandarin or Cantonese. Black moss seaweed, for instance, is a homonym for wealth; bamboo shoots sound like a term meaning "wishing that everything would be well," the word for dried bean curd sounds like the word for happiness. In Mandarin, pine nuts sounds like "send sons," Simonds says, so the nuts might appear on a dish.

Each region in China has its delicacies, she explains, from meat dumplings in the North to spicy fish sauces in Sichuan to steamed fish in southern China.

Whatever the menu offerings, the main theme is family. "The New Year's banquet is very often served at midnight," says Simonds. "Children are encouraged to stay up and celebrate to ensure the family line."

For the little ones, the food is fine, but they have other things on their minds. The red envelopes are "huge," says Ken Lee. The bills tucked inside are crisp new notes and "it's 15 days of getting money from people you knew -- and didn't know."