And we're settled into the Year of the Dragon, immersed in 2024. I don't feel that the year has only begun after the Lunar New Year. My year kinda begun when I had to begin filing pieces of work. Hahaha. What I feel now, is immense relief — that we're finally done with all the 'festivities'.
Over the weekend, we wrapped up 15 days of the Lunar New Year on the night of Yuan Xiao (元宵) with the friends. The moon was super bright and round, and all our bellies and hearts were full. Our gifts to one another were homecooked dishes. It was a delightful get-together with plenty of yummilicious wine, whisky and laughter.
The table was laden with everyone's contributing wishes and love. Of course this dinner was done with a theme and we knew that these are dishes that people enjoy and hadn't gotten sick of. There was a quick chat and nobody wanted to do hotpot. Heheheh. There were Peking duck, fish maw soup with crab meat and mushrooms, olive rice and snow crab claws with broccolini, steamed minced pork and squid, and finally a bountiful pot of poon choi (pen cai, 盆菜).
I brought that pot of poon choi. Tbh, I didn't cook all of the ingredients, obviously. I wasn't going to roast pork or duck. I bought those. My specialty is in the soup base which I boiled up from scratch. Everything else was simply blanched and assembled with little difficulty. #ImpieCooks2024
But I wouldn't do it again in a jiffy. It is a damn tedious pot to prepare. Even with my superior sense of kitchen logistics, I still needed to use two pots and a skillet. What the. No wonder people do this once a year. You spend the rest of the year practicing by cooking other kinds of soup. If you're not really used to cooking Cantonese soups, then don't attempt poon choi because yours wouldn't have that umami that a superb pot of soup holds. Poon choi must 韻味, and not many restaurants can do it either. It's not about the ingredients; it's about the heat and push (火候).
It's rather tedious putting everything together because I needed three pots. I refuse to cook all these ingredients in one pot and kill the broccoli or the scallops. Who does that. Also, the bits of fish maw and sea cucumber needed to be soaked in water overnight and boiled to get super soft, and have them soak up all the flavors of the stock. Those are practically tasteless on their own.
The wines tonight were beautiful. 2012. Mellow and rich. The digestif too, lovely nips of whisky. We didn't think we had space for dessert, but we did. Fruits appeared, along with a seasonal special of a kanpei-mikan pie and an opera cake from Pantler. Nobody could eat a slice of cake on their own. The cakes were literally cut up into four portions each. Hahahahah.
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