Eight treasures on the festive table

Shanghai

There's only one dessert that truly deserves pride of place on the Shanghainese family's Chinese New Year Eve reunion dinner - a pile of tender and sticky rice topped with candied fruit and stuffed with a center of sweetened red bean paste. This is babao fan, or eight treasures rice pudding.

Risotto may easily win awards as the most clichd dish of the decade, but it is this sweet rice pudding that brings comfort during the cold, wet nights of a Shanghai winter.