Another Birthday

TK's second brother, Chang Yao (长耀), is celebrating his 70th Birthday and TK is having a dinner for him with the family. Traditionally, for Fuzhou （福州） families, they must serve longevity noodles (长寿面) or mee-sua (面线) with chicken and eggs. 

Since the dinner is at a restaurant, TK and I talked about it and thought that it would be nice to do away with this traditional dish and replace it with this ....

It is a lovely multi-layer sponge cake in the form of a bowl of mee-sua (面线), chicken drumstick and eggs with a sprinkling of fresh spring onion and fried onion. Beside the bowl is a pair of chopsticks.  

The mee-sua (面线), chicken drumstick and eggs are fresh cream, the fresh spring onion and fried onion are crystallised papaya and the chopsticks are moulded from chocolate. All sit on a red base of sugar paste.

The 3D cake was made by our good friends, PeterZhen of Bake&Chilled and it is a lovely cake!

Gift of Chinese Food for Lunar New Year

This is probably the last gift of Chinese Food for the Lunar New Year. Today is the 14th Day of the Lunar New Year and the gift of food is from my second sister-in-law. She just came back from Melbourne.

The meal consists of four main dishes and two sauces - a spicy-sweet chilli sauce and a dark sweet sauce.

This is delicious stuffed bean curd (酿豆腐) made to our family recipe - the filling being a pork，red leek （汕斗红蒜） and salted fish mix - which is truly the original Hakka stuffed bean curd (客家酿豆腐).

The main way to eat the stuffed bean curd is to wrap them with the local lettuce and dipped into the sweet and spicy chilli sauce.

All festive meals for my mother always include my mum's favourite dish, the bean curd roll (豆腐卷). This is eaten with the dark sweet sauce.

Next is the stewed pork trotter with spare-ribs. Cooked with mushrooms and soya sauce, it is one of my favourite dish!

Of course, the curry chicken (咖喱鸡） :-)

We add on a light spinach and bailing mushroom soup (菠菜白灵菇汤). It was a really good meal. Yummy!

高祖母 (Great-Great-Grandmother)

This morning saw the birth of our family's first fifth generation child - a girl - in my third brother's family.

My mum is now a great-great-grandmother (高祖母 ) and I am now the fourth great-grand uncle (曾叔祖父). My youngest brother's two sons at 14 and 11 are now grand uncles (叔祖父) and his daughter at 20, a grand aunt (姑祖母).

My mum is so happy and grinning from ear to ear :-)

恭喜发财 Gong Xi Fa Cai

恭 喜 发 财   新 年 进 步

心 想 事 成  万 事 如 意  

Crystal Kek Lapis for Chinese New year

We received a lot of cakes every year and each year, the ones from one of our Malay friends, Rashid, are exceptional, His Prune kek lapis, Haw Flakes kek Lapis and Oreo kek lapis are excellent. This year we receive one with a new pattern ..... Crystal Kek Lapis.

Is it not beautiful? Yummy, too!

Preparing Food Ingredients for Lunar New Year

During the run-up to the Lunar New Year, there is a lot of food preparation going on - ingredients that requite a lot of time to prepare - weeks, in fact. This year I started on two main ingredients about a week ago ....

On the 2nd of January, I started preparing a special kind of dried bamboo shoot called  "ming dried bamboo shoot" (明笋干).

On the 8th of January, I started preparing the  sea-cucumber （海参).

Once done, I will put up the entire processes of preparing these two amazing food ingredients.

Ancestor Worship during Chinese New Year

For many Chinese families, the New year is not just for a celebrations of family reunions but also the occasion to pay respects to one's ancestors (拜祖先）. Our family is no different. While busy with preparations for the New Year, we are also busy getting the various things required for the ancestral worship to be conducted on New Year's Eve (除夕) and on the Second Day of the New Year (年初二).

Besides the offerings of food which includes three types of meat (三生）, tea, wine, sticky rice cake （年糕）and mandarin oranges (柑橘), there are also two types of paper offerings. Preparing them is like doing origami :-) 

One of the paper offering is for the Spirits of the Earth （土地神）

while the other type is  for the ancestors.....

There are only six pieces of the paper offerings for the Spirits of the Earth. Here is how I folded them ....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For the ancestors, one has to prepare a lot more but they are rather simple to make. We normally prepare about two large bags and here is how we folded the paper into gold and silver ingots....

 

 

 

 

 

We are all ready for the ancestral worship tomorrow (New Year's Eve).