How does a Chinese American family celebrate holidays? That’s the question that award-winning food journalist and author Hsiao-Ching Chou began pondering during the pandemic. The result is a book that she wrote with her daughter, Meilee Riddle, Feasts of Good Fortune: 75 Recipes for a Year of Chinese American Celebrations from Lunar New Year to Mid-Autumn Festival and Beyond.

Evan Kleiman: What inspired this book?  

Hsiao-Ching Chou: I really just wanted to have a project with Meilee. She’s now 18, and part of me sharing our family and cultural traditions requires that somebody’s actually receiving all of that knowledge and information. I wanted to get Meilee involved for a couple of reasons, to be able to do something together but also because I wanted her generation’s voice represented in the work. I can talk till I’m blue in the face about all the recipes and techniques and things like that but if there’s nobody to receive it, then you don’t have somebody to carry that on.

I have to ask, what does the Mandarin phrase “tuan yuan” mean?

Hsiao-Ching Chou: It’s this idea of coming together for a reunion feast. When we have celebrations, it really is about bringing family and friends together around the table. In the Chinese culture, everything is very symbolic, all the words, all the names of dishes, it is all about the wholeness of family and the wholeness of what constitutes a meal.

Lunar New Year is on the horizon, and you note that it is the biggest feast, the most family-filled, the loudest, the most festive, and the most delicious. This year, it occurs on January 29 and kicks off the Year of the Snake. Tell us a bit about how you prepare for the Lunar New Year in the weeks and days leading up to it. And something that I found really interesting in your book, which I thought was just such a wonderful moment of sanity, is how you talk about deciding what to make and what to buy that people get caught up in, in expecting themselves to make every single thing.

Hsiao-Ching Chou: Yeah, I kind of wonder where that comes from. Maybe that’s food TV and food magazines where everything is perfect, like we all get the sense that we have to deliver a picture perfect experience for everybody. And really, harkening back to tuan yuan, it’s really about bringing people together and having some food that is relevant to the moment. 

What I found teaching cooking classes is that people sometimes just need permission and once they get that permission, like, “It’s okay if you want to buy a few things, I always buy my duck” or “I keep frozen dumplings in my freezer,” it’s like it’s okay, and focus on the things that you can actually make that you feel are worth that effort. Don’t sweat it. If not everything is 100% homemade.

If we want to make one or two things for the Lunar New Year, what would you suggest?

Hsiao-Ching Chou: Well, it depends on how involved you want everybody to be. If you want it to be a group activity, definitely something like dumplings. Making your dumplings, making the wrappers, or even if you don’t make your own wrappers and you just have store bought wrappers, I think making dumplings is something fun that’s a group activity. Meilee, you probably have a couple of favorites from Lunar New Year that you have to have.

Meilee Riddle: Of course. A staple at our Lunar New Year table is always green onion pancakes because it’s also just really easy to make and something my brother and I would always help my mom make growing up.

One of the things that I think of when I think about Lunar New Year are whole fish. Is there particular significance to that during the festival?

Hsiao-Ching Chou: For sure. So there’s a saying in one of the wishes that you say is “Nian nian you yu.” That means, “Every year we hope that you have prosperity.” It’s like “many happy returns,” and the whole fish is meant to reflect that. Yu means fish. And the Chinese characters, typically they’re homonyms for words that mean “good fortune” and “good luck” and all of those things. So there’s double meaning, but you want to serve the whole fish, head and tail, and you never want to point the tail at any person, because that’s considered bad luck. And you never want to flip the fish. So once you eat the top filet, you lift the bones and eat the bottom filet. You never want to flip it because that means you’re going to turn over the ship and bring in bad luck.

Oh my goodness, I’m so glad you taught me that. 

Meilee Riddle: There’s so many superstitions but yeah, whole fish is necessary at the Lunar New Year.

And you do a ginger scallion branzino, a steamed one. It’s pretty easy to make, isn’t it?

Hsiao-Ching Chou: Yeah, the steamed fish is pretty easy to make, as long as you have the right size of fish to match the size of your steamer, but cooking it itself. I mean, really, you score the fish, add the seasonings, and steam away.

Meilee, I’m really curious, did the process of working on this book with your mom enlarge your eating palate. Did you come to enjoy things that previously you hadn’t enjoyed so much?

Meilee Riddle: I am a self-proclaimed picky eater, and I definitely have had a lot of struggles with broadening my palate. I didn’t necessarily go from not liking something to liking something but I definitely was able to try out some of these new recipes that I just hadn’t had before, and I thought they were pretty good, like combinations of foods that I already liked. So scallion pancakes but with meat filling and sandwiches and things like that. I’m definitely still working on going out of my way to try things that I haven’t liked before, or just even trying new things. It’s pretty hard but I’m still learning.

A worthy goal. 

Meilee Riddle: Yeah, for sure.

Hsiao-Ching Chou: But you know, I think we all struggle with that a little bit. There are plenty of things that I didn’t eat as a child but now I eat voraciously. Part of that kind of teaching is exposing the youth to the broader flavors. So back to one of the reasons I wanted to do this with Meilee is to open up that landscape and say, “Here are different ways that you can engage with food,” encourage her to be more open about different types of flavors. 

You’re such a good mom. Leave us with a dish that is one of your craveables that you just really love, that you knew you had to include in this book. 

Hsiao-Ching Chou: Gosh, I really love the stir fried fish balls and vegetables. It was something that I remember my mom making. Usually you buy fish balls or you can make them but I buy them frozen, and they go into a soup, but they’re so good in a stir fry, especially with a bunch of different vegetables. So I really like that. That’s something that I haven’t really seen in other cookbooks.

In “Feasts of Good Fortune,” a mother and daughter reconnect with their heritage through recipes. Photo courtesy of Sasquatch Books.