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Sunday, March 26, 2017

Chinese New Year in Songjiang

 New Year is really not one day.  It seems to go on for at least two weeks, and I am not convinced that it isn't longer than that.  But on New's Day we sojourned out to Songjiang to spend the day with Lizzie and her family.  Wow. It was an exceptional day, starting with the subway ride out there.  It just amazes me that the subway in Shanghai stretches out so far and that it is so affordable.  The New Year meal begins with at least eight cold dishes, followed by at least ten hot dishes, a soup, and closes with at least two desserts. And we did that not just once but twice.
Here is the midday celebration, which had a lot of highlights, but I will enumerate just a few of them. The cold dishes were all delicious, but the best was a poached shrimp with peas that was very simply prepared, but delicious.  The thing that I was surprised that I liked was the jellyfish.  It has a very crunchy texture, which surprised me because I thought it would be squishy, and the sauce was like a tempura dipping sauce, very straightforward and allowing the jellyfish to be the main feature.  Of the hot dishes, the Mandarin Fish was the clear favorite--luckily it was across the table from me or I would have eaten the whole thing.  It is a whole fish that has the skin removed, then is fried and then finished with a great sauce.  So delicious.  And filling.  And then we had to do dinner too.  Which was home prepared by Lizzie's grandmother and even more amazing.

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