Thursday, February 25, 2010

Chinese New Year Reunion Dinner 2010

It's the 10th day of Chinese New Year and I'm so glad it's coming to an end. Chinese New Year is the one festival that I least look forward to even when I was a child, and now as an adult. The spring cleaning is the bitchiest part and I never really fancy the visiting ritual as well. However that being said, I do have some salivating pictures that I took during the reunion dinner to share. :)



I'm a very "domestic" person so I've always love my family reunion dinner to be a private affair. You know, just me, my sister and both my parents. We had so much prepared for the dinner and it was definitely more than enough to feed the four of us!



First dish was, abalone and limpets served on a bed of kyuri and lettuce in garlic and chili lime sauce. It's actually my first time eating limpets - a type of shellfish and I didn't like it. It kinda looks wrong (go google the de-shell picture ;p) and I find it to be too soft. Both are from New Moon (the brand , not the movie. lol) with the abalone costing RM 70 per can and limpets RM 22.



A feast is not a feast for the Chinese without shark fin soup. So, shark fin soup we had! You can actually get the shark fin(uncooked one) easily from the wet market. Don't know how much is the market price but my parents got 500g for RM 170.



One of the many huge pieces of shark fin! We each had 125g of shark fin! :P I just hope the people from PETA won't come bashing me after I post this. :P



Braised sea cucumber and fish maw is another dish peculiar to a Chinese feast. My mum had it braised in dried scallops and Chinese leek. She cook quite a pot of it but we serve it on a smaller portion. And while it tasted great, I'm not a fan of anything braised.



We also had steamed fresh water tilapia. While most families have the best fish during reunion dinner, my family don't. Reason? Fishes during the Chinese New Year season are at ridiculous prices and it's also the time when it is the least fresh. My dad is very particular about the freshness of any seafood he put into his mouth so we have fresh water fish instead. The tilapia is from Batang Ai and this is the only fresh water fish we eat. No "weird smell" that most fresh water fish have, I guarantee!



I just realize that my family actually had quite a lot of dish from the seafood family. Hehe. But yes, we do have meat as well! The steamed chicken is something we have every year. I ate quite a bit of it because...



I have the great home made chili sauce to go along with! Orgasmic! :p



Using the stock from the steamed chicken and the canned abalone, my mum made fish maw, mushrooms and crab meat balls soup. We're suppose to eat the meat balls during Chinese New Year (affectionately called lion head) so that people will respect us. Heh.



Lastly! We had the beef curry with potatoes. We cook this in a big pot (I love curries!) but only took a bit during the reunion dinner cause we had so much dish already!



And of course, we did have rice. I know my "chicken plate" seems to be making a lot of appearance in my blog yea? Haha. I love classic Chinese plates. You can hardly find them these days!



Since there's 15 days in Chinese New Year, here's to a prosperous and auspicious Chinese New Year to all my readers! Thank You for reading! (Actually feel really bad not updating for a while when I see the un-dropped traffic. Thank You again!)



Have a great Chap Goh Mei weekend!






5 comments:

wen ni said...

where did you buy the New Moon abalone for only RM70?

Melanie said...

Wen Ni : We got it from a reliable seller. We're the fixed customer. :) But some hypermarkets were selling it for almost the same price as well days before CNY.

Melanie said...

Baby : I am hungry myself looking at these pictures. :(

David said...

Wow~ Very impressive! *drooling*
All the food were so colourful... Really whips out one's appetite. =P

Haha... Hopefully those animal rights activists wouldn't track you down in this blog or else they gonna do all the crazy stuff. >.<

Love those "chicken plates" too. Very classically chic indeed... (^.^)v

Melanie said...

David : Hie! Hahaha yeah, i was expecting some animal activists to comment but non. Hahah! Classic Chinese plates are pretty .. too bad now they hardly sell those. even if they do it's some cheap and ugly ones.