Chap Goh Meh cooking

Chap Goh Meh, also known to the Chinese as Yuan Xiao, is the 15th day of Chinese New Year. This is, as usual, an excuse to engage in yet another session of eating and celebrating. This year, thanks to Chap Goh Meh falling on a Sunday, my non-traditional family got together with some relatives from my mother's side to have a meal. Also, having a horrendously extended family meant that we weren't able to fit everybody into the hectic 3 day visiting schedule, and so had to arrange a time to meet up after the initial rush of visiting. The menu for dinner - an excuse for me to visit my Chinese cooking roots - was as follows:

1. Fried Seafood Tang Hoon
2. Lor Bak (braised pork belly) with steamed buns
3. Chap Chye (vegetable stew)
4. Chicken Curry with Peranakan Rempah
5. Hee Peow (Fish Maw) Soup
6. Fish balls and broccoli (ostensibly for the kids)
7. Tang Yuan (glutinous rice dumplings stuffed with sesame paste) in soybean milk

The piece de resistance was supposed to be my Nonya chicken curry, survived that ordeal with 1 burnt pot (my fault for trying to jagah 2 monkeys, cook the curry and shepherd's pie at the same time for the kids' lunch). Poor maid had lots of washing up to do.



The Lor Bak turned out better - used Terry Tan's recipe which sears the pork belly in caramelized sugar, then braised in soy sauce and galangal. A very piquant flavour for a rather heavy dish.



The chap chye was an exercise in mish-mash - I know significant other was very happy with the Fatt Choy I threw in the dish (mainly because he loves it exiting from the other end - sorry folks!). Added Pacific clams as a twist, turned out okay, but in future I think I will use dried scallops.

The real fun I had was in making the Hee Peow soup, which probably had the most accolades. I had used my biggest pot, but even then I couldn't find any leftovers in my usual late night forage last night. Here is the Hee Peow recipe that I will probably make a staple for future celebrations (with the Lor Bak and Chap Chye)!

Hee Peow Soup Ingredients
Hee Peow (1 packet of medium sized fish maw about 300g)
1 abalone (canned) thinly sliced
meat balls (150 g minced pork, 150 g minced prawn, 1/2 tsp salt, mixed and rolled into 1.5 cm diameter balls)
10 fuzhou fish balls (available in wet market)
1/2 cabbage cut into large pieces
White fungus (1 head, soaked and hard yellow part removed. Remaining fronds chopped into 1 inch chunks)
Chicken stock

Method:
1. Bring chicken stock to boil.
2. Add in the meat balls. Stir gently.
3. Add in fuzhou fish balls and white fungus. Boil for 5 minutes.
4. Add in cabbage, hee peow (cut into 3 - 4 cm lengths) and boil for 10 - 15 minutes.
5. Add in abalone and turn off fire and cover the pot tightly.

Aunt commented that this was more ingredients than soup, probably because I didn't stinge on the hee peow - love it!