This year I was abit late in listing down the recipes and going around looking for the ingredients. Didn’t know what stuff I got so busy with until almost neglected the most important Chinese culture. Lol.

I almost told my mum to just buy the ingredients for steamboat because I got ‘lazy’ just by thinking bout it! The agony of coming out with 8 entrée!

But then the tradition must go one – since it started by me. *sendiri cari pasal la* So, when the day came, I started chopping up the ingredients at 3.30pm as mum requested to eat earlier at 7pm.

Mum would drop by the kitchen, asking if I need her help. But thinking that I have plenty of time left, I told her that I’ll be fine on my own.

Little did I know, time really FLEW!

By 5.30pm, only 2 courses were done and I had to yell for my sister to help me in frying few things as I was busy preparing for the major dishes!

Bacon wrapped scallop

Sat came at 6pm – cause I told him too. And I thought of asking him to help up. But he dressed up so nicely and calling him to the dirty kitchen would mess him up.

So just me and my sister. She went on deep frying 2 dishes, and stir-fry the vege on my behalf while I frantically ran in and out the wet kitchen getting more and more ingredients, the correct plate; did wrapping, decorate dishes and food tasting.

Stir-fry mixed vege with love apple

Guinness stout spareribs

Firecracker prawn

By 7pm, the fish was put into wok for steaming and the plates were laid on the table, together with glass cups, chopsticks and spoons. Followed by the dishes soon after that.

Restaurant style steamed white pomfret

The dinner started half an hour later as I got carried away with the timing. However the highlight of the dinner was still in the oven by the time we started eating. LOL!

After 15 minutes into eating, I took out the chicken from the oven. This dish supposed to be double-steamed, but because mum gave away the steamer to her friends last time which I didn’t know about that (–”), we have to ‘bake’ the chicken.

Lotus wrapped 8 Treasure Baked Chicken

Thank god it turned out well despite the black burning of the lotus. *Phew

If you noticed there are only 6 photos available. That’s because I forgot to take picture of the dessert – which doesn’t really matter since it was half fail. Half fail because the tastewise was good, but lookwise it didn’t! Probably putting ice cream on top of the supposedly cake would make it nice! Haha!

As for another one, it supposed to be fruit salad – which I didn’t make because everyone couldn’t eat anymore at the end of the meal. We only took dessert 2 hours after dinner as we were too full!

Having been the ‘major chef’ on the CNY eve since 2006 continuously is seriously an honourific task. From choosing the right recipes (in order not to clash with superstition beliefs) to cooking the dish out and decorating them requires an enormous work and energy and time! But it’s all worthwhile. Afterall reunion dinner only occurs once a year, so no complains!

Maybe next year I should reduce to 5 entrée and 1 dessert. 6 (pronounced as lak in Hokkien) sounds like LUCK tho the Cantonese’s ‘fatt‘ (8) which means PROSPER! sounds even nicer! Haha

Well, we’ll see about that next year…