Seasonal delicacies: Let's stick to tradition
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Sep 21, 2010 - ST Forum
I WISH to highlight how ridiculous the concocting of new tastes for seasonal traditional delicacies, such as mooncakes and rice dumplings, has become, and the waste in unnecessary packaging for mooncakes.
It gets wackier with each passing year, concocted with a view to charging exorbitant prices. Rice dumplings now even come with foie gras filling.
Hotels and restaurants compete to create new and strange-tasting stuff; the more ludicrous, it seems, the better - and pricier. Seasonal delicacies, which are an integral part of tradition, should remain traditional.
The Mid-Autumn and rice dumpling festivals are traditional Chinese celebrations. One should savour them accordingly by offering traditional food, instead of using them as a fig leaf to promote pricey, new fare with little or no bearing on the celebrations.
Christmas cakes and puddings, for instance, rightly retain their traditional flavour. Do hotels and restaurants here market new, wacky flavours for such important Western seasonal fare? I am certain Westerners would be horrified to find durian or pandan flavoured Christmas cakes and puddings.
Packaging has also got out of hand.
Mooncakes used to be packaged in simple paper boxes. Now, they are packed in expensive cardboard or metal boxes, and even baskets.
It is not only a waste of money, but also environmentally unfriendly.
Even if the mooncakes are bought as gifts, it is absurd to package them as though they must survive a harrowing journey.
Shouldn't a modest box using recycled paper tied with a ribbon suffice, especially when almost all of them are discarded immediately upon receipt?
If I buy mooncakes for personal consumption, I usually refuse the boxes. For those I receive as gifts, I try to recycle the boxes as containers. Even so, there is a limit to the number I can keep, especially when they are so durable.
We should remain true to tradition while remaining environmentally conscious.
Sin Chey Cheng (Ms)
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im all for traditional.
those fanciful flavours are just part of commercialisation for the kaching kaching
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my mooncakes are $14 and come in a simple red cardboard box..
and they're delicious.. usually the first in the office to run out...
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prefer the simple traditional ones.
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Originally posted by Clivebenss:
prefer the simple traditional ones.
i prefer durian ones
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The ang more at my site office brought some to work, they call them moonpies.
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Hail the originals!