Reunion

I know, I know.
Very belated but here it is anyway!
So every year on Chinese New Year's Eve, my mom would be slogging in the kitchen to prepare the food for the reunion diner, 团员饭 (tuan yuan fan). (Of course I help!) These are the pictures of some of the DELICIOUS dishes my mom whipped up. Sorry for my lousy angling but I hope you will still feast generously!

盆菜 (Peng Cai)/Fortune Pot
This is one of my favourite dish! As the name suggests, it is a sumptuous pot of chinese delicacies. I heart the prawns, sea cucumbers and the quail eggs most. I do not like abalone although it is considered the delicacy of all delicacies by many Chinese and my sibling chopstick fight over them. I got sick of eating them every Chinese New Year! Same goes for those mushrooms which I did not touch for similar reasons as the abalone. When I was a mushroom loving kid, I was given at lunch and dinner a towering bowl of all sorts of mushrooms. Well, you can pretty much guess one day, I got so sick of eating them and threw up so...



鮑魚 (Bao yu)/Abalone
These are the sliced abalone which everyone lovessssss! (Except me of course) I shall not go into details on how abalone from X is better than Y because of Z reasons.

五香 (Wu Xiang)/Ngoh Hiang

In simple terms, this is a deep fried meat roll which consists of minced pork meat, chestnuts, onions, spring onions mixed with a generous amount of five spice powder, seasoned with sesame oil and soya sauce. My paternal grandmother does it the best maybe because she is Hokkien and this IS a hokkien dish. Sad to say, I do not like this dish either. No traumatic experience of over-eating it like abalone and mushrooms by the way. It just does not "click" with my tummy.

帶子(Dai Zi)/Scallops
Fresh scallops stir fried in Mom's special sauce is sooooo yummy! I think there are two types of scallops here but I am no scallop expert so they would just be called scallops. This dish is usually adorned with boiled broccoli at the sides or would be stir-fried together with the scallops with eggs.

Vegtable Stir-Fry
I have to admit I do not know what this dish is called. My Mom basically just stir fried some chopped cauliflowers together with mushrooms, tofu, carrots and some vegetarian beancurd thing sprinkled with crispy deep fried soy things. Sorry for the poor description but I really do not know what they are called and neither does my Mom actually. This dish was one of those forgettable dishes. I love vegetables but this just did not cut it for me.

Roast Chicken
This is just down-to-earth roast chicken which is very very succulent. Do you know roast chicken is one of my comfort foods?

Fried pork cutlets with/without cheese
The "cheese pork cutlets" are the ones on the right side and the "normal" pork cutlets are the ones on the left. Um. Actually, I forgot. I made this dish all by myself. I mean how hard can dipping pieces of pork into beaten egg, flour and breadcrumbs be right? Wrong. The deep frying part was tricky because the oil and to be at the right temperature and I had to "know" when it was done. It was not too bad but not great because it was done by yours truly. It would have been ten times better if my Mom did it herself. Really.

燒肉(Shao rou)/ Barbequed Pork meat
This is my absolute favourite! I can never get sick of this I swear! My maternal grandma made this with her broiler and having eaten numerous pieces of it at lunch, I could still stomach another ten pieces at dinner. My Mom begged (ok, asked) my grandma to cut her a portion so that she could cook one dish less and I really do not mind, it is soooo good. To be honest, I like it wayyyy more than those sold in the stores. Man. I feel like eating those right now

now.