Intermountain’s cafés are celebrating Worldwide Wednesday on the last Wednesday of every month in 2021 by serving a diverse dish from around the world. The January 27 dish will be twice cooked pork with noodles, a dish from China in honor of the Lunar New Year.
Chinese culture relies heavily on symbolism and celebrations. This certainly holds true when it comes to food and the Lunar New Year. The first day of Lunar New Year begins on the new moon that appears between January 21 and February 20. The first day of the Lunar New Year in 2021, the Year of the Ox, will be Friday, February 12. The Chinese Lunar New Year is a 16-day long event that dates back over 4,000 years and features the largest festivals and celebrations in the country. An abundance of food and daily feasts are a highlight of this time and the choices of cuisine all have special meaning.
The Nutrition Services team has decided to combine two classic Chinese dishes, twice-cooked pork and Beijing style noodles, for January’s Worldwide Wednesday dish. Twice-cooked pork is a staple in Szechuan cuisine and is often served in a fiery red chili sauce. To be more approachable to our caregivers and guests, we’ve used the same traditional method but paired it with savory noodles that represent the Beijing style cuisine of China. Beijing food often features savory meat dishes with rich brown sauces and noodles. Old Beijing Noodles, Zha Jian Mian (pronounced Sha ch-jow-ng me-ann), have heavy notes of umami from the miso, a recipe comes from a very old tradition of cooking noodles on a very hot wok or skillet by steaming them with miso soup. It’s accented nicely with the fresh raw vegetables mixed into the noodles while they’re still hot.
Symbolically, pork and the pig represent wealth and prosperity. It’s said to bring luck and business success to eat pork on the New Year. Noodles signify happiness and longevity. Thus, according to tradition, enjoying this meal should bring you a long and happy life full of financial prosperity.