Chinese New Year Toss It High, Mix It Right
Raw ideas
Here are creations by six chefs, which may inspire you to add pizzazz to your yusheng at home
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What is Chinese New Year without lohei?
The tossing of yusheng, or raw fish salad, is a popular festive practice here. Lohei and yusheng were also among the latest additions to the National Heritage Board's intangible cultural heritage inventory.
With about a week to go before the end of the 15 days of Chinese New Year, there is still time to toss to greater heights.
Be inspired by how these six chefs have beefed up their yusheng creations this Year of the Ox.
YUSHENG WITH INK
The art of arranging yusheng is not limited to the placement of the ingredients. Executive chef Leong Chee Yeng, 54, has added a touch of artistic flair by presenting his yusheng alongside his Chinese calligraphy.
Chef Leong, who helms the kitchen of Jade Restaurant at The Fullerton Hotel Singapore, says the Chinese calligraphy helps to highlight Chinese culture and traditions, making it more meaningful. "Adding Chinese calligraphy to the yusheng is like the icing on the cake," he says in Mandarin.
Using sweet and sour sauce before dusting on some cinnamon powder, he writes and draws whatever comes to mind, such as auspicious phrases and ox illustrations.
He sweeps ingredients he deems "messy", such as peanuts and other dried items, under the mountain of vegetables. He tops it off with fresh beetroot, alluding to the Chinese idiom "hong yun dang tou", which symbolises the arrival of good luck.
SHOWSTOPPER
With liquid nitrogen fumes billowing from the dish, the yusheng at Parkroyal Collection Marina Bay's Peach Blossoms is a showstopper.
Executive chef Edward Chong, 38, has added liquid nitrogen to his dish for a dramatic visual effect. Organic chrysanthemum petals are dropped on the dish to signify purity and cleanliness, especially in the time of a pandemic.
He has also put in fruit such as jackfruit and rockmelon to complement the vegetables so that the yusheng is more refreshing and lighter on the palate.
The fish is served separately to each guest instead of being tossed in the yusheng. This is to ensure everyone gets an equal amount of it, with the use of fish signifying "nian nian you yu", meaning abundance and prosperity throughout the year.
LION HEAD
At Peony Jade @ Keppel Club, executive chef Ricky Liew has decided to break his streak of zodiac animal-inspired designs by going for the lion head instead.
In view of a muted Chinese New Year with the Chinatown bazaar and most lion dances called off this year, the 39-year-old hopes to re-create the festive spirit by bringing the lion dance to homes in the form of yusheng.
He hopes that his prosperous lion head yusheng will chase away the pandemic with its fierce looks.
3D YUSHENG
One Farrer Hotel's yusheng is anything but flat.
To lift spirits during the pandemic, executive Chinese chef Wong Yaw Vun, 42, has come up with a three-dimensional (3D) yusheng in the shape of an ox face.
To create the ox's horns, he and the hotel's executive chef Marcus Tan, 40, use breadsticks sprinkled with chicken floss.
Instead of concealing ingredients not of auspicious colours, the two chefs believe in mixing and matching the hues well.
"Yusheng is a very colourful dish. With all the hues equally outstanding, it boils down to the matching of colours," says chef Tan in Mandarin.
GRAZING OX
A yusheng designed to look like the zodiac animal of the year can never go wrong.
Master chef Mok Wan Lok, 55 , who leads Szechuan Court at Fairmont Singapore, has created a yusheng that looks like the face of an ox and alludes to the Chinese idiom "niu zhuan qian kun", which means to reverse an unfavourable situation.
He has arranged pieces of abalones and snow crab meat to look like Os and Xs to form the word, "Ox", and uses green radish around the "mouth" to make the yusheng look like the face of a grazing ox.
It was a series of trial and error before the chef got the colour combination of the ingredients right.
What was most important was to match the ingredients' taste and the hues. Colours that do not seem fitting, such as the shredded carrot in orange, are concealed in the yusheng.
"You have to put your heart into it," says chef Mok in Mandarin.
YEN FOR YAM
If tossing yusheng sounds too pedestrian, what about smashing it?
In what is the most "over-the-top" yusheng, executive chef Martin Tan, 41, of Swissotel Merchant Court's Ellenborough Market Cafe, has created a yusheng that comes with a crispy yam basket that contains sous-vide lobster and sits atop the yusheng.
For "hao yu tou" (yu tou is yam in Chinese), which means good sign or omen, smash the basket open with a mini drumstick and bulldoze your way to good fortune.
"I keep thinking of how I can use the yam ingredient since it is linked to Chinese New Year," says chef Tan in Mandarin.
He has also added interesting details to the lobster, which is called "long xia" in Chinese, with long being the character for dragon. For example, he has rolled dragonfruit into balls that look like "long zhu" or the pearls of a dragon.
