Chinese welcome new year in a whole fish way

For home cooks with access to a Chinese supermarket -- or any market that sells whole fish -- Chinese New Year dinner isn't an overwhelming task. The most challenging part of serving a whole fish is gutting it. That's done before you leave the store.

Whole fish will be served on most Chinese tables next weekend. (Chinese New Year, marking the Year of the Pig, falls on Sunday.) "It's traditional for Chinese New Year, with the head and tail on," says Connie Moy (no relation to writer) of Pearl Villa Seafood Restaurant in Chinatown.

The tradition comes from Cantonese phrases associated with whole fish, that is, fish with heads and tails intact. They mean "happy endings and beginnings," "everything is perfect , " and there will be leftovers every year -- a sign of prosperity.

One recent afternoon at Pearl Villa, waiter Raymond Chan nets a tilapia raised in upstate New York from a tank near the restaurant's front door. In the kitchen, chef Tommy Ma makes a universal tool of his cleaver, bleeding the fish, scraping its scales, and removing gills and guts. Ma washes the tilapia's cavity before using the cleaver to deeply slit each side of the fish, parallel and close to its spine, to allow for even cooking. He lays the fish on a pile of scallions to lift the fish off the heat and allow better steam circulation, then sprinkles it with slivers of ginger.

In old-school Cantonese cooking, steaming a fish with the barest of ingredients is the best way to show its freshness. Moy said she doesn't think highly of fish fillets or previously frozen fish, but local cooking instructor Bik Ng says that fillets can be steamed , as long as the fish has been properly stored from the time it is caught, to ensure freshness. "In China, when my mother goes to the supermarket, if the fish is dead already, it's not fresh," says Ng. "Anything that's not moving is not fresh." Northern Chinese styles of fish preparation include deep frying and coating a fish with sweet and sour sauce, or using bean sauce. "The Cantonese would say that's not fresh," she says.

Still, for those with access to swimming fish, Pearl Villa's head chef Bin Chu recommends letting a fish that has just been removed from its water and gutted to rest for 30 minutes before steaming. "That way the fish's fresh flavors will come out," he said.

At home, a plate of fish can be set on a low stainless steel rack, available in Chinese markets, and steamed in a wok for 10 minutes. "A deep frying pan will do the trick," Ng says. She also recommends buying a domed cover for a few dollars from a Chinese market. The same fish takes 15 minutes in a wall-mounted restaurant steamer, with a rectangular door like an oven, because of its bigger interior, says Chu .

Moy's friends in Hong Kong, busy with careers, often resort to microwaving their fish with plastic wrap. She doesn't recommend it. For one thing, the temperature is hard to control. "It doesn't taste as good, but it cooks in two or three minutes," says Moy, who opened Pearl Villa 10 years ago. About five years ago, her son, Anthony, 34, took over the business.

In early February, Pearl Villa's kitchen staff is already preparing for Chinese New Year, During the afternoon lull, a chef boils, fries, and brines a plastic bin of pigs' feet, another lucky dish. The feet are braised for two hours with fermented bean curd, garlic, ginger, and soy sauce. Tubs of lotus root are cleaned and peeled. Head s of boiled whole chickens peek from stainless steel bowls of ice water, their combs a caramel color .

When the fish is done, Chu pours off liquid that has seeped out, adds more scallion pieces, a little sesame oil, a shake of white pepper , and a ladle of hot oil .

As for the serving and eating, Moy says, whether with chopsticks or spoons, it's all a matter of preference. In China, her mother would have two fish on hand. One would be steamed on New Year's Eve, to leave out overnight and tide the year over.

The other would be steamed later and served as part of a big banquet -- either eight courses or nine. Nine courses is traditional, a custom accompanied by its own saying of "long life forever."

"Never make it seven," Moy says. "Only dead people have seven courses."

Pearl Villa Seafood Restaurant, 25 Tyler St., 617-338-8770.