The Day After Mid-Autumn Festival

Happy Day After Mid-Autumn Festival, everyone!

What? You don't know what I'm talking about? Let me enlighten you - last night, if you were to venture outside after the moon came out, you would have seen a full moon. In fact, you would have seen the biggest full-moon of the year. It would have appeared brighter and closer to the earth than any other full moon you may have seen since last Fall. In China, this day marks a Festival of Epic Proportions. This is one of two days, all year, when family members trek over the rivers, through the woods...and across provinces...to make it back to Mom's house for a Feast.

The Feast will include many symbolic dishes, much like a New Year's Feast. Since I am not an expert in Chinese Food Symbology (??), I will just share with you the few things that I do know.

1) The meal, itself, will be epic. Fish, chicken, pork, 4-5 kinds of vegetables, soup, rice...and fruit to finish everything off. Fruit is the standard Chinese Feast Dessert. You will find dessert soups in restaurants, especially when finishing off a Restaurant Feast to celebrate a wedding, birthday, or anything else. In homes, however, fruit is the norm.

2) There will be mooncakes, somewhere. Mooncakes are Chinese pastries, about the size of a Big Mac. (With over 1,500 calories a piece, you might be better off just sticking to your Big Mac if you get peckish!) The outside of the pastry is wrapped in a tender, buttery crust. The inside is filled with lotus seed paste (almost like peanut butter, but denser, and made from the seed of the lotus flower) and one to two salted egg yolks floating in the center of the whole thing. The idea is to share one pastry between 4-8 people. When the pastry is sliced open, the egg yolk is exposed and it looks like a full moon.

3) After dinner, the children will gather outside with their parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins and any stray friends that may have joined the family for the evening. They will light off small fireworks with their dads, or chase each other around with "dang lung" (battery-powered, often cartoon-themed, lanterns on sticks.) All the women will sit back and watch their futures chase each other over and around the blacktop parks that seem to be a part of every apartment complex. (You must understand - the majority of the apartments in Hong Kong, the area of China that I am familiar with, are really small villages. Each "tsuen" (group of apartments) will have from 4-20 buildings, each up to 30 stories tall, with 12 apartments on each floor. Most tsuens have their own elementary schools nearby, and almost certainly have their own grocery store or outdoor market where the wives can do the majority of their shopping without ever getting on public transportation. These markets will have everything from live chickens to small shoppes that sell electronics or the materials that children need to play or do their homework.)

This all leads us up to today - The Day After Mid-Autumn Festival. Today is the day when no one works. If anybody had to work before they got on a train to go to Mom's house yesterday, that's fine. Today, everyone sleeps in. Shoppes are closed until the early afternoon, if they open at all. The outer parts of Hong Kong are like ghost towns - the streets empty, the blinds drawn.

However - it's not too late! Since tonight is still, technically, a holiday...you can still make your feast! I've assembled a list of my favorite Chinese recipes, pulled from my foodie blog that I run with a few of my siblings - The Chow Review. At the very least, give your kids an extra hug tonight, from Aunt LoLo, and try to catch a glimpse of the moon - it's still going to be spectacular.

Cha Siu Ribs (This method is also AMAZING with bone-in chicken pieces. I've heard the sauce is also tasty on foil-wrapped fish filets, steamed on the BBQ.)

Fried Rice (This is often the PERFECT dinner for the day after a feast, to use up all the left overs.)

Chinese Style Broccoli (Using a simple sauce of soy sauce, oyster sauce, sugar, cornstarch and water, almost any green vegetable can be made "Chinese-y" and thus...delicious!)

Spinach with Oyster Sauce (Another simple preparation for greens, and a favorite of my mother.)

Sweet and Spicy Shrimp with Cucumbers (A simple, cold salad or cucumbers, shrimp and a sweet and spicy chili sauce. This is a dish that my family demands of my mother in law each and every time she comes to town.)

MaMa's Velvet Chicken (This is one of LoGung's favorite dishes - a juicy, tender whole chicken, steamed on the stovetop. This chicken is perfect when little bites are dipped into a sauce of equal parts minced ginger, minced green onions, soy sauce and pan-cooked canola oil. Most dishes that call for oil in a dipping sauce or oil as a final garnish require the oil to be heated to frying-like temperatures first, to get rid of the sticky mouth-feel of raw oil and to change the flavor to one a little more cooked and finished, rather than raw and...umm...you know, oily.)

Oh, and my good friend Tonggu Momma informs me that Bubble Tea is new "hip" thing to add to your Mid-Autumn Festival Feast. Because everyone knows that huge, black, DELICIOUS tapioca pearls look round, like a moon! (I've been hearing the round-like-a-moon comment a lot lately...but it has nothing to do with Bubble Tea and everything to do with an ever expanding waistline and a bottomless appetite I seem to have developed since our Feast last night. But that's neither here nor there. Moving on.)

Enjoy your Day After Mid-Autumn Festival, everyone!

PS - I received these corrections from Lo Gung. Thanks, honey!

:Just a quick correction. Mid-Autumn Festival is always on the 15th day of the Eighth month on the Lunar calendar. The moon is full and COULD be the biggest (the moon is closest to earth) that month. However, it isn't ALWAYS the case. But my eyes could hardly tell when it is actually the biggest full moon. So, it doesn't really matter. The wonderful food is what matter most to me!!!

Clarification: The lotus seed paste in the mood cakes is very dark brown in color. So, when you look at the moon cake with the egg yolk, it really looks like the moon (bright yellow) at night (lotus seed paste). Mid Autumn Festival was my favority holiday when I was little because there are so many cool electrical lanterns (every kid must have one on that night, or else, it will be a sad day). The food is always amazing. The fruits are also unique as they are mostly seasonal fruits only available in late summer, early fall (e.g. persimons (sp?), pomellos, star-fruits, mangosteen (sp?)). They are awesome. When I was in Hong Kong, we would eat dinner as a big family, then go outside and play with lanterns and candles (you can build huge fires from the wax from the candles), while the grown-ups play mahjong all night. Then when the kids return, we would have moon cakes and fruits until we are full again. Then it is video game time. People stay up very late. That's why the holiday is on the day AFTER the mid-autumn festival. Hope you enjoyed these explanations!! - Lo Gung