Christmas in July

These photographs were taken in a Hakka village in the mountainous region of Southern China during our recent visit in January this year. They showed the "waxed duck", pork, and even giblets hanging out on long bamboo poles to be air dried by the cold and dry prevailing wind from the north. These air dried delicacies reminded me for many reasons. First, I love to eat them. We always have them during the Chinese New Year festival. But I didn't always like it when I was young as it is extremely salty and leathery in texture. Besides, we were spoilt with choices from the myriad of food available at the festive season. As I became older, the aromatic flavour of the waxed duck cooked over the rice in a clay pot often makes me feel like Chinese New is upon us. Well, I supposed it is like eating Christmas plum pudding at any other time outside the Yuletide season. By the way, we do celebrate Christmas in July in the Southern Hemisphere. In a country where Christmas is celebrated in summer, it seemed only logical to mimic our northern cousins to celebrate the Yuletide festivities in our winter months from June to August. So Christmas in July was born and flourished throughout the Blue Mountains region to capture the Yuletide atmosphere.
As we are now in mid-autumn, the cool weather has beckoned me to start and prepare “lap mei” (Cantonese - waxed delicacies) such as waxed duck, sausages and waxed pork for my family and friends for the coming winter months. Besides, the wintry weather is appropriate for tucking in the northern traditional winter food. I have started the “lap mei” preparation with the waxed pork and will be posting and sharing the recipe in the coming weeks. Please stay tuned.