The Bub in the Belly

Here's a Youtube video of the children tossing the yee sang! The video is about 2:27 minutes long. Each child has a different style - Ryan is mainly moving the chopsticks left and right (vigorously) on the plate, Brayden is mainly moving his chopsticks in a circular motion, Matthias is mainly stabbing the plate, and Ern is quite demure and a little worried about the mess. They got into the spirit of things and most of them managed to do some tossing, especially Brayden! By the time they were done, most of the yee sang was no longer on the plate! I think the children had lots of fun, so hopefully we'll be able to give them the chance to do it again next year!



You can also see that Ryan is partial to his left hand although I don't think he has quite made up his mind yet which will be the dominant hand.

Red packets were distributed to the children and the party ended shortly after 10 pm. Each family left with a pair of mandarin oranges and each child left with a paper dragon and those chopsticks. This is the paper dragon (I got it from Chinatown). You hold one stick in each hand and stretch it out. Ryan loves it!

Oh, I wanted to show you what Shann's family brought for us! Garlic! As her daughter, Ern, passed them to me, she told me, "Huat ah!"

Shann & Ern

The usual group of parents organised a Chinese New Year get-together for the children on Sunday (5 February 2012) and everyone agreed to contribute in some way. On our part, we volunteered to provide the food and host it at our place. So for us, last weekend was a blur of cooking (with a little bit of art appreciation thrown in).

It seemed only right that we serve Chinese food and incorporate Chinese New Year dishes so the menu was yee sang, fried rice noodles (bee hoon), minced pork porridge, curry chicken, fried spring rolls, stir fried prawns in XO sauce, stir fried asparagus and chicken, egg foo yoong, koi fish-shaped agar-agar, and tang yuan (dumplings in ginger flavoured syrup). We decided to buy the first three and make the rest. I initially wanted to make the yee sang too, and had already bought some of the ingredients, but when I started planning the menu, I decided that I would focus on the other dishes instead and just buy a good quality yee sang (we ordered the salmon yee sang from Si Chuan Dou Hua).

So the day before, Saturday, was spent getting ready for the party, which for us meant going to the market to pick up some groceries and preparing the dishes that could be prepared in advance. When we got back from the market in the morning, I made the koi fish agar-agar. The moulds were made of very thin plastic and the first one was a disaster - the mould went out of shape when I ladled in the (too) hot liquid! I corrected my mistake and the following moulds turned out fine. I was very happy with the result!

These had fresh milk in the mixture, resulting in brighter colours.


These were without milk, giving a more crystalline appearance.


For lunch, we went into town. Richard did some banking while I picked up some extra plates, bowls and servingware. Then, we took some time out to go to the National Museum to visit the Dreams & Reality exhibition, which was a collection of mid-19th century to early 20th century works from the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. There were over 140 masterpieces including works by Monet, Degas, Renoir, Cézanne and Manet. Some of the highlights of the exhibition were Vincent Van Gogh's "Starry Night" and Alexandre Cabanel's "The Birth of Venus"!



Ryan was pretty intrigued with some of the paintings as you can see from the photos.


This was Cabanel's "The Birth of Venus". Absolutely breathtaking. Ryan was quite absorbed.



This was a Monet. Lovely.

When we got home, I started on the curry chicken. Richard helped me with that - he does like to pitch in and so I usually chop up and prepare all the ingredients while he does the work at the stove. I love curry chicken with potatoes and have been making this dish since I was about 14 years old. Actually, I think every Malaysian loves this dish. I made it less spicy and a little more creamy, as I wasn't sure everyone could take the heat. It used to puzzle me whenever someone asked whether the curry was hot - after all, isn't curry supposed to be hot? Malaysians never ask this question, but I find it quite common in Singapore.

Here's the curry chicken! We served it with bread and it soon became a dry rendang because everyone mopped up the gravy!


At night, I rolled the tang yuan - I must have rolled 500 of them! Ryan helped me and we worked until the wee hours of the morning, making baby tang yuan without filling and bigger tang yuan with gula melaka filling. Richard pottered around, tidying up the house, making sure all the cameras were fully charged and arranging the furniture.


The next day, we overslept and missed Ryan's swimming class! By the time we got out of bed, it was already half-past 11. I quickly chopped up and fried the filling for the spring rolls, letting it cool and drain. I made enough for 50 rolls.

The filling for the spring rolls

We went out to pick up more fresh ingredients as well as the fried noodles (which came with cabbage and fried chicken wings). Then it was off to Shichida class while Richard picked up the yee sang and the porridge (and dough fritters). After class and back home, it was a race to the finish! Teamwork was crucial - Richard went back to the stove to make the sweet soup for the tang yuan, while I cleaned the prawns, sliced chillies for the condiments, rolled the spring rolls, and marinated and chopped up the ingredients for the other dishes. Richard fried the spring rolls and cooked the rest of the dishes while I pottered around preparing everything else and setting the table.

We made it by the skin of our teeth - the families arrived just as Richard was cooking the last dish! I didn't have time to do a few things, like remove the price tags from our new plates/bowls, heat up the porridge and prepare a mini yee sang for the children (I asked Shann to do that by taking a small portion from the main yee sang, while I dashed upstairs for a quick shower). But that was all right. As long as the food was all there, our job was done!

Chinese New Year celebrations go on for 15 days in Singapore. The official holidays last for only the first two days but celebrations start a few days before and continue for the rest of the 13 days, albeit in a slightly less intense fashion.

Yesterday (Sunday, 5 February 2012), we had a small gathering at our place with four other families. It was great fun, and I will put up a full post on it soon, after I get through the updates on our trip back to Malaysia.

This year, the first day of the Lunar New Year fell on Monday, 23 January 2012. We needed to be back in Malaysia in time for the traditional reunion dinner on Chinese New Year eve and so did everyone else so we expected the roads to Malaysia to be jammed up over the weekend. We decided to drive up the Friday before, which was a good decision, because it was a very smooth drive. We arrived in time to do some banking, have lunch at our neighbourhood coffeeshop and then we popped by Richard's sister's (Margaret's) house for a bit.

The next day, we lazed about at home. In the evening, we met up with Richard's parents for dinner, together with his sister Mary at Mama Mia Chinese Restaurant in PJ State. Here's Ryan tossing the "yee sang" at the dinner table.

However, try as we might to keep everything safely stored away till that red letter day, we still end up amassing knick-knacks here and there. We had this cabinet built (in our home in Malaysia) so that we could toss everything inside.


You can see, at the very top, some framed photographs taken when Ryan was still a baby. Below those, is this ceramic photoframe, which was a gift from Mary. We put in a photo of Ryan taken each month from birth till his first birthday.


Our wedding photo, taken in 2001.


Some books, lots of graphic novels.


Richard bought this Bang & Olufsen Beolit radio online, after scouring the internet. He bought two sets, from two different people outside of Singapore, and both were not working. He was undeterred and managed to hunt down an old guy in Singapore to repair them for him. Now, one set is in Singapore and one is here.




At the bottom of the cabinet, you can see a round white bowl. That was a housewarming gift from Sarah for our Singapore house. I felt it was too big to display in our Singapore house without risk that it would be accidentally smashed by either the pets or children, so I carted it back to Malaysia. Somewhere at the top of the cabinet is a pair of jade Chinese guard dogs which Richard's parents bought for us as a housewarming gift for our house in Malaysia.

These are wooden figurines from Sarawak, which are probably as old as I am. My family stayed there for a few years when I was very little.

My mum arrived in Singapore on Wednesday night, so we were able to spend the last day of the Chinese New Year (Thursday) together. Of course, it was food and more food!

My mum spent the afternoon in Chinatown while I went to work. My partners and I treated our team (associates and secretaries) to lunch at Si Chuan Dou Hua, which is on the 60th floor of UOB Plaza (Tower 1). The menu was quite good, but frankly speaking, after dining so well over the past 15 days, I thought there was little that could really impress me. I was therefore pleasantly surprised that, of all dishes, their yee sang (or yu sheng) was the best that I have tasted in all the restaurants I have been to over these past two weeks. They served it with fried enoki mushrooms and crispy salmon skin, aside from the usual salmon, abalone, mandarin peel, pearl onion, etc.

Usually when there is yee sang, the guests lose interest after the first small helping and have to be persuaded to take further helpings to help finish the dish. In the end, the service staff will simply transfer the remainder onto a smaller plate to make space for the next course. None of that was necessary today. Everyone was fighting to have more!

Long Spout Tea Performance

The view from the restaurant on the 60th floor of UOB Plaza 1

See the silhouettes on the upper floor at the left? That's Richard carrying Ryan in his arms, with my mum sitting across the table.