Gathering around a hot pot

This was our steamboat feast last night, ostensibly to mark the Duan Wu Jie, but really, do we need an excuse to get together to pig out?

Just an hour before dinner, Mum and Second Sis were busy with the last minute addition to the menu – home-grown lady’s fingers (okra) stuffed with Mum’s home-made fish paste. She prepared seven – one each.


Hey, we only have so many okra plants in our garden, you know.

Anyway, there aren’t many pictures of the event because the photographer was too hungry, and no camera’s image stablelizer feature can compensate for the shakes and shudders induced by a fiercely growling stomach.

But thankfully, steamboat dinners are a regular event at home, and we had one similar one on the third day of Chinese New Year. Although it was for five instead of seven, we had the usual mainstays of our meal. Pork…


… prawns, seasoned with a healthy dose of grated ginger …


… squid …


… and savoury tofu, cut into small pieces.


Other mainstays are a variety of vegetables, some sort of noodles, and beancurd wraps and beancurd balls stuffed with fish paste (yong foo chook and yong tau pok), pictured in the previous post. Essential to the meal are dips, which add flavour and zing to the food. We usually have three or four different types of dips around, one of them a spicy chilli sauce.

We use a Thai charcoal steamboat pot that’s not too big, which is good, as that means not too much soup will evaporate during the continuous boiling during dinner.


Brother usually takes care of starting the fire. He heats pieces of charcoal over a gas stove, and when they are sufficiently hot enough, he transfers them into the pot, which is placed in out bathroom, and proceeds to coax them into a high enough heat, with the aid of a hair dryer.


Then, the pot – with its raging charcoal and some soup that’s already gurgling away – is transferred gingerly to the table.


We fill the pot with more soup (vegetables, an old chicken and Chinese herbs boiled over many hours under Mum’s watchful gaze), add a bit of wolfberries (gei zhee) and the yong foo zhook and yong tau pok, and let it come to a boil.


Then we all dig in and eat away, always making sure to make space around the table for the Leftover Brigade.


When I’m away and I think of family dinners, I always invariably have a picture of this hot pot in the centre of our old round table, with all the fresh goodies waiting to be cooked, and everyone digging into a communal pot, serving food to others.


It is much more than just a meal, for it has a strong social element to it. So it is not surprising then that we’ve tried to replicate it some 9,000 miles away from home, among friends!


The fish balls and meat balls might have been store bought; ditto the fish paste (although we did the stuffing of the foo zhook and tau pok ourselves). The pot might have been a bit too big, running on a portable gas stove. But it was all good! We made the soup from scratch, like Mum, and the thinly sliced beef was from a Korean market and quite heavenly. We ate slowly, savoured the many bottles of wine at our disposal, and let the pot and conversation warm up a cool February night.

Bak zhang, steamboat and other seasonal goodies

Today (Sunday June 8, 2008) is the fifth day of the fifth month of the Chinese lunar calendar, which is the Duan Wu Jie (端午节), also known as Dragon Boat Festival. For many, the occasion is marked chiefly by the making and eating of zhang (zongzi, 粽子) – glutinous rice and a variety of stuffing wrapped in bamboo leaves, and then steamed or boiled.

The quick and dirty history behind the festival is as follows. Upright Chinese scholar quits corrupt government. Wanders the country getting in touch with the people and writing beautiful poetry. Country’s capital falls to barbarians; scholar depressed; commits suicide by drowning as a form of protest against inept government (that’s what happens when you can’t join the opposition and contest in elections). People distraught. They throw glutinous rice into river so that bad creatures won’t eat dead scholar, under the theory that fragrant rice is better than rotting flesh. So, nowadays we eat bak zhang to remember this upright scholar. Well, actually, we eat them because they ARE YUMMY.

Anyway, for the full history behind the festival (and why folks race dragon boats during this festival), there’s always the most accurate, reliable and up-to-date onlinepedia in the world ☺.

I was going to write this very long post on the adventure of asking Mum to teach me how to make bak zhang, and the whole time-consuming process, but, sorry J, I got lazy. Basically, preparing the ingredients was not a problem; wrapping the bak zhang, however, proved too much for me. I just couldn’t get my fingers and hands dancing nimbly enough to produce a self-respecting version that has a semblance of some pointy corners, or learn how to tie them up properly to withstand the boiling. I was also so slow that in the time I took to make six, mum finished 30.



Most of mine turned out like the worst kind of politicians – shapeless, slippery and totally disintegrating when subjected to heat. Only two of my six survived the watery inquisition. Ancient scholar would have been fish feed if he had to depend on me.


There are today a gazillion varieties of savoury and sweet zhang on the market, but we eat a very simple version of the savoury bak zhang, with pork…


… oysters and chestnuts.


We have in the past added mushrooms, and most classic recipes for the savoury type will call for some (or all) of the following ingredients – Chinese sausage, salted eggs, dried shrimp and boiled peanuts. But our preference follows our family’s more stripped down taste buds.

We are also having a family dinner tonight to mark the occasion – a steamboat (or hot pot, or da pin low as the Cantonese call it) feast for seven. Mum started making her fish paste yesterday …


… so we’ll have homemade bean curd sheets and beancurd balls stuffed with fish paste (yong foo zhok and yong tau pok, below) as well as the usual assortment of seafood, pork, home-grown vegetables and noodles.


Sis is bringing frog’s legs and pork kidney to liven things up. It’s not quite the season, but San Francisco Bay Area Dungeness crabs would have been perfect!

I now have to go to the gym to train for tonight’s food fest!

Lor mee, comfort noodles

Mum made the quintessential Hokkien noodles lor mee for lunch yesterday… what a treat! Lor mee is a simple soup noodle dish in a thick-ish broth that is easy to cook and a staple fare in traditional Hokkien families. It is less well known than the dark fried Hokkien mee that KL is famous for, although a self-respecting fried Hokkien mee stall would serve lor mee, too.

The basic ingredients are garlic, pork, prawns, thick yellow noodles, whatever vegetable you can get your hands on (we used spinach this time round), eggs and black vinegar. Cut the pork into small strips and marinate with a little soy sauce and tapioca flour (or arrowroot flour if you prefer). De-shell the prawns. Beat up the eggs (we used two for the five of us).

Put a little oil (or, a lot of oil, if you are cavalier) into a heated big pot or wok, and cook the prawns. Remove prawns and then throw in come chopped garlic and the prawns shells and sauté until the combo smells heavenly and you’re reaching for some snacks to stay your hunger pangs.

Add in the desired amount of water (depends on how many people you are cooking for) and boil. Mum adds anchovies too to the soup to give it extra oomph. Add salt to taste.


After the soup has boiled and simmered for a while (oh, anything from 5-15 minutes, depending on how rushed you are), remove the prawn shells from the soup (use a sift) and then throw in the big fat yellow noodles and the pork, and bring to boil again, cooking for a couple of minutes. At this stage you might want to add a thickening mixture of tapioca flour dissolved into a little water. This gives the soup its dense, smooth character. Then throw in the vegetables (spinach cooks very quickly) and the cooked prawns, and simmer for another minute or so. Turn off the heat and stir the beaten eggs in evenly. Viola!


We eat lor mee with a couple of standard accompaniments. The first is fried diced shallots and ewe poke (or itsy bitsy pieces of lard). Mmmmmm, larrrrd.


The other is a combo of super hot chilli padi (Thai chillies), chopped garlic and soy sauce. Spicing the noodles up with some Southeast Asian heat marks the inevitable evolution of a community’s culture as it moves away from the motherland and assimilates and takes root in its new (chilli-eating) home.


The ingredient that makes the dish distinctive, though, is a generous helping of black vinegar. And not just any vinegar, mind you. Purists will insist on eng choon lao chor (in pinyin, yongchoon laocu, 永春老醋). This aged vinegar is one of the most well known products from Eng Choon/Yong Chun, an area in China’s Hokkien/Fujian province known also for its Mandarin oranges. I managed to sample both at its source over 10 years ago when visiting my grandfather’s ancestral village there. That was so gooood.

Don’t skimp on the vinegar – get in a good two tablespoon-full (at least) for the invigorating kick!


Why, you might ask (or you might not) are there no precise measurements for the instructions above? Well, I don’t pretend to be running a recipe site. And secondly, have you ever tried getting precise measurements from your Mum, especially if she’s been a homemaker all her life and doing this with her eyes closed?

Me: How much noodles are you using, Ma?
Mum: Depends. Are you hungry? [Yes, I was, so she added noodles!]
Me: And how much water did you put in?
Mum: Usually just short of the rim of the wok should be enough.
Me: And the pork?
Mum: I’m using a portion from a piece I bought the other day.

Hope that was helpful for you, too ☺

Quick and easy BBQ primer

What are the key ingredients to a successful home barbeque? Start off with some skewers, soaked in water, so they don't burn when you put them on the grill. Get a medley of vegetables (kinda like a ratatouille over an open flame).


Many folks like beef, which taste great paired with a juicy, lighter partner like pineapples.


Prawns...


... and pork chops are winners ...


... especially if they end up looking like this! Mmmmmm.


It's not all meat and seafood though. Get some brinjals ready.


Sweet potatoes and corn are always popular.


Start up the fire and get them buggers over the flame.


Arranging them neatly means you're sensitive to the wants and needs of amateur photographers the world over.


Get the oil ready, and baste occasionally.


Trot out the fish, if you have any. We had sole the other night.


Other key ingredients are a free-flow of wine, a group of hungry people, and a reason to celebrate – in our case, a friend's successful kidney transplant.

Oh, I forgot, you should also always have a Jack Russel or two handy, for all the bones etc.


Saves on the cleaning up!

We remember

Today is Qing Ming, the day for honouring and remembering the departed members of one’s family by visiting their graves, cleaning them and offering prayers. As it is not a public holiday in Malaysia, most Chinese families observe the ritual on one of the weekends around the actual day.

Every year, we make a short trip to the cemetery where my grandparents are buried. Last Sunday was no different, as Dad and my siblings woke up early to join many families making a trip first to the market to buy roast pig and other delicious food to be offered to their ancestors, before heading to the many cemeteries around Kuala Lumpur and Petaling Jaya. We also bought vegetarian food for Grandma. It is usually a full family affair, although Mum has not made the trip these past few years ever since her mobility became somewhat restricted.

I was to have gone along too except that a severe bout of diarrhoea the night before confined me to bed. I have no problems whatsoever taking some part in these festivals, even though I observe a different faith from my family members. After all, much of the festivals and rituals that make up the Chinese way of life are not strictly religious but cultural. In fact, it is difficult to separate the elements of Confucianism, Daoism and Buddhism that make up a traditional Chinese way of life that is closely rooted to farming and the land as well as the changing of the seasons. I actually enjoy these family rituals – they remind us of the ties that are important and enduring.

When my parents were younger, we would all troop off to our grandparents’ grave on Qing Ming to find it, and all other graves, overgrown with chest-high lalang. Clearing it would be quite an effort since lalang is a particularly stubborn weed. As Mum and Dad grew older, and to spare them that onerous task, we began observing a two-step Qing Ming – Brother (and sometimes Dad) going a couple of weeks before Qing Ming to do most of the grunt work, leaving a token patch of weeds for clearing on the day itself.

I joined Brother early last month for the Step 1 big clean-up. It is relatively easy to find where our grandparents are resting – their plot is close to a frangipani tree.


When we got to the site…


… we found it in pretty good condition – no lalang, no mounds of rain-carried earth all over the concrete floors, no armies of ants making the many cracks and crevices their home! Still, we broke out the heavy equipment…


… to give the plot a good sweep. The wimpy weeds were cleared in a jiffy, and before we knew it, we were done.


Brother lit up a couple of bunches of joss sticks and placed them in front of Ah Ma and Ah Kong, before we left.


When J and I were in Kyoto a couple of weeks ago, we spent a very pleasant day strolling through the incredibly beautiful Kodaiji (temple) grounds. While tourists like us were breathing in the zen calm, the locals were visiting the adjacent cemetery and paying their respects to their loved ones. These were some of the most beautiful resting places I have encountered.


A much larger section of the cemetery is on a hill slope overlooking the city.


Family members first stop at the entrance to pick up a bucket, a scoop and some water.


Pouring water gently over the tombstones symbolises purification. The tombstones are then elegantly dressed with pretty flowers.


The plots may be tightly packed together…


… but the clean lines of individual tombstones and orderliness of the whole cemetery …


... evoked a sense of serenity and space instead of claustrophobia.