Yee Sang

This is traditionally a South East Asian New Year salad. On the second day of the New Year, restaurants and homes everywhere will serve this dish to "Kai Nian" ( in Mandarin ) meaning officially opening of the New Year. "Yee Sang" literally means "Raw Fish". Many years ago, raw fish were used but ever since the scare of people dying from having eaten bad raw fish, chefs have come up with other cooked seafoods in replace of the raw fish.

The sauces for this dish is poured onto the salad and everyone would toss the salad as high as possible into the air with their chopsticks, and saying auspicious things like -promotions for this year, doing good in school, good health, good business ventures etc.

This is my version of my Yee Sang:

Ingredients:
*All the ingredients are sliced into strips. This serves 4-6 people.

2 abalones from a can. You can add more if you like.
6 radishes
1 carrot
1/2 a jicama*
1/2 a green apple*
1 cup tightly packed lettuce
1 cup tightly packed pomelo*
1/2 cup tightly packed pickled pink ginger*
1/2 a bowl of cooled boiled water with lemon juice added.*

For the sauce:
3/4 cup plum sauce
1/2 cup cooked vegetable oil*
1/2 cup toasted peanuts, ground coarsely*
1/4 cup toasted sesame seeds
1 cup of crumbled prawn chips* (optional)

* immerse the green apple slices and jicama slices, separately into the bowl of lemon juice water. This will stop the fruit and vegetable from browning.
* Pomelo belongs to the citrus family and the skin is very thick. Use a knife to circumcut the fruit at the "equator", and tear away as much as you can,the white skin membrane. Segment the fruit and break out the large chunks of the pulp roughly into 1- inch chunks.
* In a sauce pan, pour the vegetable oil and cook until you see smoke rising from it. Pour into a porcelain bowl and let cook completely.
* you can buy peanuts that have been deskinned in an Asian supermarket. Toast the peanuts and after it has been cooled, ground it up coarsely, slightly larger than kosher salt.
* You can buy prawn or shrimp chips in an Asian supermarket. Crumble them up with your fingers and place in a bowl to be tossed later with the rest of the peanuts and sesame seeds. You can also use vermicelli or dried noodle that has been deep-fried in hot oil. or you can go without like I did in this recipe.

Method:

In a large round platter ( it is auspicious to use round platters as it means full circle ), place the abalone strips in the centre, and surround that with all the other ingredients.
Pour the cooked vegetable oil, plum sauce, ground peanuts and sesame seeds onto the salad and toss away!