Wednesday, February 10, 2016

年初三 :: 勤羊辭舊千家同喜,頑猴鬧春萬戶皆福


I have a weakness for mee siam, Malay or Peranakan style. I'm quite picky about how it should taste like. Each family does it differently though. Depends on what kind one prefers. It's a simple dish, but not that easy to do it well.

Super fresh prawns are needed to boil up really good stock. I'm not fond of using chicken stock. I'd like to keep it seafood based. There ought to be a good balance between tau cheo, tamarind and palm sugar. Every crucial flavor lies in how the rempah and the gravy are made. I like mine slightly drier with a ton of onions and fried shallots. So it's preferable to separate the gravy from the vermicelli. I like the gravy spicy more than sour-sweet. The accompanying sambal must be spicy, of course.

It was very nice to visit the old folks and had a surprise lunch of mee siam laid out for us. Wow. It was a good rendition. Tangy spicy mee siam. Mmmm. Even though it's only the third day of the lunar new year, it's a week day, so the old folks wouldn't have cooked up a storm. It would be the weekends that they might do something fancier since more people visit during then.

Dunno who on the team tattled and told the old folks it was my birthday yesterday and my lunar birthday today. Nobody admitted it. GROWL. So the old folks had the bright idea to cook up a huge pot of gravy and rempah, fried up beancurd and bee soon, and boiled some eggs. They took the extra step to make two types of sambal- one sweeter and one fiercely spicy. Heh. There was even a homebaked pandan chiffon cake. They know I don't take sweet stuff, but they said I could take as small a slice as I wished, and everyone else would part-take. Heh. Yes! Super ideal!

Am very touched and glad to share a meal with everyone. I went for seconds. Totally didn't expect this. It's such a precious gift. No wonder the team-mates insisted that we do our rounds earlier instead of the weekend. You all ah!!!

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