This year, Chinese Lunar New Year falls on January 23rd. It’s the Year of the Dragon!

Despite the inconvenience of our home still being under renovation, we still went ahead and had a wonderful celebration on Lunar New Year’s Eve with 20 other friends and family. And ‘Yusheng’ was the highlight of the evening.

Yusheng, a Teochew-style raw fish salad also known as Prosperity Toss or Lo Hei (Cantonese), is a popular salad for Chinese New Year.  It symbolizes abundance, prosperity, and vigor.

While original versions are thought to have existed in China, the contemporary version was created and popularized in Singapore during the 1960s amongst the ethnic Chinese community.

The main ingredient, raw fish (Yu), is used in this salad, 年年有余 (Nian Nian You Yu), symbolizing ‘Abundance and excess throughout the year’.

Yusheng remains a must-have to celebrate Chinese New Year with my family in America. Besides keeping the Chinese tradition within the Western community, we really enjoy this salad!

The Yusheng I made at home, which I call the ‘American Yusheng’, is based on fresh ingredients that can replace some of the original ingredients. For example, I use grapefruit instead of pomelo, and strawberries replace the original white radish, with added red coloring.

The ingredients in this Yusheng I made include strawberry (starting from the front center clockwise in the picture), grapefruit, jicama and apricot on top, kiwi, cantaloupe, cucumber, mango, and carrot.

I cut all shredded vegetables and fruits by hand to preserve the juice. In the center of the platter is salmon sashimi surrounded by shredded cabbage, garnished with chopped cilantro, spring onion, and fried shallot.

It took me 8 hours the day before to cut them all. That’s a lot of work to prepare such a big platter of salad, but it’s all worth it!

Before our guests tossed this platter of Yusheng salad with chopsticks, I drizzled homemade plum sauce dressing over it and dusted toasted ground peanuts on top, symbolizing “A household filled with gold and silver”, 金银满屋 (Jin Yin Man Wu).

Everyone tossed the salad together with chopsticks at the same time, shouting “LOU HEI, LOU HEI!!”  “捞起, 捞起!” It is believed that the height of the toss reflects the height of growth in fortunes, thus we tossed enthusiastically! What a fun evening we had!

Here is my plate of Yusheng salad, with extra ground peanuts! It was very delicious!

To all my Asian friends and everyone in the world, may this Dragon Year bring you abundance, prosperity, health, and happiness!

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