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Gong Hei Fatt Choy!

Happy Lunar New Year everyone!


It was a whirlwind weekend filled with lots of food no less.  K and I took Monday off too (woohoo!), and we took a trip down to Chinatown that day for a simple but nice lunch in a Malaysian restaurant before walking around a bit, finishing the afternoon with a bit of shopping, and then hosting 初一 dinner at home.

The celebrations started for us on Saturday night, where we were kindly invited by the Kim's for a nice meal of Chinese steamboat dinner.  When we arrived we saw Rachel with two plates of shredded vegetables, and she was lovingly preparing 鱼生.  We were so happy to be able to toss some salad that evening to usher in the year of the monkey!

Soon all the guests arrived and we commenced with 鱼生 saying blessings over one another and tossing the food, followed by a very sumptuous steamboat dinner where we all ate so much that night.  King prawns!  Beef slices!  Fishballs!  Scallops!  Glass noodles!  Straw mushrooms!  So good!

The spread

Rachel and two plates of 鱼生

She spent a considerable amount of time shredding them

But first, group pic

Soon I was receiving all the lovely CNY pics from home, including this of my brother and his little beautiful family.  I love this pic which spells all bliss :)

Blissful family of 3


On Sunday night for the reunion dinner, we were invited to yet another dinner party over on the other side of West London, at Noelle's.  She was hosting a bigger dinner party and hubby Ong was one of the chefs of the night.  Everyone was looking forward to our arrival because it meant food is nigh!  We met a lot of of her friends of whom we have not seen before, and chef Ong was highly regarded for his three dishes: steamed fish, chicken curry and stewed beef in Korean sauce.  As most people had to work the next day, the party ended at a decent timing of 9pm.


Group shot for the night

Well, not us.. we had Monday off and that feeling was awesome.  We relaxed a little, ran some errands on our high street before heading into Central London.  We went back to Little Penang in Chinatown which we both discovered recently and like.

Chinese New Year lunch - curry chicken noodles

Me and my seafood hor fun

We went to Selfridges to collect my new winter trench which I ordered a few days prior, and which I am very excited about because it took me a few months to look for a suitable winter coat.  Did you know it really is a task trying to find a suitable winter jacket?  Neither did I.  Funnily this was what K shortlisted for me just before Christmas and he has been very sweet, looking out for winter trench jackets ever since, showing and telling me "oh this is nice" or "what about that?".  I have been monitoring the price of this particular one and wishing it would drop but no, they reduced the price of every colour except the camel :(  So finally I caved in.. and promised myself to wear it for a long time!



ok back to the purpose of this post, which is CNY.

We went home and started preparing our 初一 dinner for our guests.  It was very much a B&K team effort and we were both busy milling about the kitchen.  

And dinner is served!

Thanks to K's mum who gave us a can of superior abalone when I was back in Nov/ Dec, we remembered to open it during Chinese New Year.  We thought about how best to eat it - cold, cut in slices or cooked in soup (though for not too long).  K liked the idea of it in soup so I put them in when the herbal soup was about done.  I cooked a traditional CNY dish of Chinese leeks which I love but K wasn't a big fan of.  Well whatever it is, in Teochew it sounds like "count" so yes, if you want to count money in this new year, you need to eat some!

Herbal chicken, pork ribs and abalone soup

Chinese leeks with prawns

We also had steamed fish and some bak kwa.  For dessert we had homemade almond tofu jelly served with preserved rambutans stuffed with pineapple bits.  I had prepared the jelly and chilled them in the fridge before leaving the house that morning.


Complete with bottles of Tiger beer which K says is a must as it reminds us of CNY back home

And yes that wraps up our gastronomical weekend of non stop eating!

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