Reunion Dinner (25 Jan 09)

Finally, the spring cleaning and housekeeping are completed just before the CNY eve.

And on CNY eve, we were busy preparing our dishes for the reunion dinner at my home.

This is the 'Must' dish for CNY - 斋菜... have to cook it in the afternoon, so that after the dinner, Dino and Andy could 'da bao' back home....We spent 4 hours to cook up 2 woks of this dish, and that excluded the time for the preparation of the ingredients, cutting up the vegetables, pre-cooked the mushroom, dried bean curd, etc on the day before... Though the cooking method was more of to 焖 the ingredients, but still need to constantly fry and stir and turn the ingredients to prevent the base from 'chao dar'... as we have only 1 burner which has the big fire, thus, have to finish cooking 1 wok, then follow by another. And by the time 2 woks are done, we already suffering from aches all over our shoulders and hands liao....

But not time to relax yet... already 4 pm, we have to cook the dishes for the reunion dinner.

Both Dino and Andy arrived just before 5 pm, which was supposed to be our intended starting time for the dinner... but we were late.... still in the midst of cooking....

Menu for the Reunion Dinner:
1) Steamed Fish;
2) Broccoli with Scallop and Abalone
3) Sweet and Sour Gu Lu Ruo
4) Yi Pin Guo (Braised Seacucumber, Fish Maw, Button Mushroom, Roast Pork, etc)
5) Prawns with Soy Sauce
6) Spinach with Abalone
7) Chicken Wings (Mum's secret recipe)
8) Tempura Prawns

Dinner started only at 7 pm and probably by the time, almost all were already hungry, so we gobbled up most of the dishes... yum yum....