Festive Foods

I finally downloaded the 300+ photos from my camera taken at random times over and past three months.. and discovered that a huge number of them are food photos! So I thought since today marks one month after cny, why not have a little food blog about what we have been feeding ourselves the past month..

So two weeks before CNY, we took out our food processor to ground up three kilograms of pork (that is a lot of pork!) to make ngoh hiang with. And we thought, since we have the food processor out and some bad tasting mango plus old kiwi fruits in the fridge, why not make a healthy wholesome fruit smoothie?

We threw in some oranges and yoghurt for good measure. The smoothie turned out a tat sour (no thanks to five kiwis and one very sour mango) but it was quickly resolved by adding some honey.

Amazingly, that night dc and I stayed awake in bed and talked for three hours in the darkness, wondering how come we are both so high. We fell asleep only at 3pm, and not surprisingly, overslept for church the next morning. Apparently kiwi fruits contain lots of various vitamin B’s that increase metabolism.. So, think twice before ingest five kiwis at night.

And to complement the CNY atmosphere, we made bak kwa bread using our bread machine.

Technically I used chinese sausage that was microwaved a little to render its fats, but its effect is probably the same. Yummy. Really happy that we bought the bread machine, though it did take quite a few tweaking to optimize the breads that come out. Now we know what exactly goes into our breakfast (no preservatives for sure) and nothing beats freshly baked bread in the morning! More on the bread machine later..

Meanwhile, the seafood-loving bear is taking notes of all the 山珍海味 he’s going to tackle this new year.

And staking his claim on the can of abalone my parents sent over..

 

So anyway, back to our 3kg worth of ground pork..

With shrimps, shallots, garlic, carrots, mushrooms, water chestnuts, and lots of five spice powder, it became

 

 

:) Served a third of the stock over two CNY gatherings, and still have plenty in the freezer for days we are lazy to cook..

With the shrimp heads left over from all that ngoh hiang making, dc rolled up his sleeves to make his famous prawn noodle stock.

Frying the shrimp head to get the brain juice is the only gory part..

Singapore prawn noodles – soup and dry version. The gore is worth its wait!

With all the cultural cooking going on, I just had to do some baking too!

Pirated kueh bahlu (since I didn’t have the proper mold) and undocumented traditional peanut cookies! I still have more almond meal in the fridge.. was a little ambitious buying the ingredients and wanted to make almond cookies too. Got distracted by the almond cookies that my parents sent over.. and one month later, cookies are still unmade haha. They will be gone soon, not to worry.

Two weeks after CNY, we finally found an occasion to prepare 鱼生. My mum feared that I would not get to taste her famous yu sheng while I’m overseas, so she took the time to fry the crackers, prepare the sesame seeds and sent over a yu sheng kit together with a can of abalone. It was funny and heartwarming at the same time to see familiar things coming from Singapore. So for this gathering, I cut lettuce, carrots and chillis, together with some of the preserved stuff in the kit. We also bought turnip for this dish, but our neglect led to food spoilage.. oops. Nonetheless, the yu sheng turned out perfectly with the sour plum sauce from Singapore (and years of tutelage from my mother, of course).

My mum will be proud. :)

With the reminding abalone, we used part of it to augment our bak chor mee :)

Just reminds me of the Sarawak Kolo mee in Singapore. My sister’s one-time favorite.   

And since this entry is on festive food, we can not forget about today’s special festival.

Happy Pi Day!

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