Buddha’s Delight

As a child, I looked forward to Chinese New Year, also known as Lunar New Year, with glee, anticipating fun and deliciousness. It was a night filled with wonderful foods and clever games like “yu, ha, hai,” (which translates to fish, shrimp, crab), a simple dice game that I relished playing because it made me feel like one of the grown-ups, my uncles and aunts who stayed up late talking, eating and socializing. It was also special because I was allowed to stay up late—a treat for a kid who normally kept getting up out of bed, all zipped and cozy in her bright red footed pajamas, insisting that she wasn’t sleepy, not at all. 

People who celebrate Lunar New Year all have their own traditions, but for my family, the evening began with a big meal. We had a table decked out with all the meats and seafoods you could imagine—the emphasis on this day was of richness, indulgence and dishes with meaningful ingredients. Picture a spread of whole roast duck, a whole steamed fish (“yu” is “fish” in Cantonese, and it rhymes with the word for prosperity), a whole poached chicken, ginger and green onion crab, crackling-skinned roasted suckling pig, and lettuce wraps filled with minced dried oysters (“ho see” is “oyster” in Cantonese, and it rhymes with the word meaning good deeds).

There was always one dish on the table, though, that offset all that meatiness—a dish called Buddha’s Delight or Lo Hon Jai in Cantonese (Jai for short), a vegetarian stir-fry of mushrooms, greens, tofu, bean curd sticks, snow peas, bamboo shoots and bean thread noodles. “Jai” is the term for vegetarian, or Buddhist cuisine. To “sik jai” or “sik sou” are the terms that mean to eat vegetarian. My family’s version back in the day included all of these ingredients, and also dried lily buds, black moss and furu, a fermented bean curd paste, whose strong, pungent salty-funky flavor I have never developed a taste for, that is sometimes added to stir-fries or used as a condiment for congee. 

In those days, jai was not the dish that captured my imagination. As a child, I only wanted the fried, the sweet and the savory. By contrast, eating the Buddha’s Delight at Lunar New Year seemed like something you had to do because it was part of the holiday, but not something I ever had a craving for. Jai was like the dish that kids ate to be good. And now after learning a bit more about the tradition, it turns out that that is what the jai dish is supposed to do. 

It is traditional for this dish to be eaten on the first day of the new year. It’s thought that this dish can purify—both physically and spiritually–after a festive meal filled with rich and savory meats. Eating jai was another folk tradition for Lunar New Year—other ones included wearing new clothes, trying not to say bad things about anyone (the idea is that if you speak kind words, good things will return to you for the rest of the year) and not using sharp objects like knives or scissors (to refrain from cutting away good fortune and ensuring a year of peace and harmony). 

All grown up now, I enjoy this dish on its own terms. The play of color from the bright orange carrots, the green vegetables and the yellow baby corn delights the eye, while the contrasting textures of the toothsome noodles, the crisp tofu and blanched vegetables, and the chewy mushrooms both cleanses and wakes up my palate after a season of rich foods. The earthiness of the shiitake mushrooms adds an umami depth of flavor, while the slightly nutty soy sauce–based sauce brings everything together. The flavors are bright and delicious, without leaving a sense of heaviness after eating. Eating this dish symbolically takes me into the new year with a sense of lightness, peace and calm.