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Good Fortune Abounds

Columns Ethnic Faves

January 6, 2013

Story By: Dining Out Team | Photos by: Rachel Breit

By Rachel Breit

Greet the Chinese New Year and encounter happiness at Golden Palace Seafood Restaurant with two traditional dishes.

Enjoy a vegetarian dish brimming with colors and auspiciousness. Jai ($6.95) is traditionally prepared on the first day of Chinese New Year (Feb. 10) and features symbolic ingredients.

Eat the flavorful and varied dish to ensure a healthy start for the New Year. Look forward to longevity from long rice and black fungus (mok yee); wealth from lettuce, black moss (fat choy) and baby corn; good luck from red dates (jujube) and carrot; unity from snow peas; new opportunities from mushrooms; and blessings to the house from fried tofu and bean curd sticks.

Traditionally preparing the dish without butchered meat means that sharp objects will not be used, and therefore your luck will remain intact. Jai is cooked with light seasonings to preserve the fresh, individual flavors of the vegetables.

For the second day of the New Year, bring wealth within your reach with Oyster Sauce Glazed Pigs Feet Over Lettuce of Wealth ($7.95) — another symbolic dish. Pigs’ feet, an offer to honor the god of the land, represent “having something at your reach” and the Chinese word for “oyster sauce” sounds the same as “to have good things.” Hence the dish’s meaning: “To have wealth within your reach.” The feet are softened by braising for hours then cooked in oyster sauce to crisp up the skin.

Golden Palace Seafood Restaurant

111 N. King St., Honolulu
521.8268
Open daily, 7 a.m.-10 p.m.

Honolulu, HI 96817

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