CHINESE NEW YEAR 2007

This year's CNY is indeed a strange one. It's potentially the last one I spend in my flat, in London, with friends. How emotional these days have been...and will be in the days to come.


Friday night - spent at D's place. We had "打边炉" and D was all so excited about his new gf G whom he could not wait to introduce to us...hehe...will definitely catch up with G in HK since that's where she's based.

Sat night - with my wonderful HKie gang! Not alot of us were there as the lucky ones had gone back home/holiday and the not so lucky ones had nights. We were at Shanghai Blues and ate till our hearts content. Thanks to WingK we had a good time after dinner with copious amounts of alcohol and sang karaoke till 5am!

Sunday lunch - party at A,S and Zacy boy's home. S was a wonderful hostess and made you feel more than welcome at her beautiful flat. The group was labelled broadly as "family" vs a very small minority of non-relatives.(people like moi) We had 鱼生，乳猪 and a whole host of other traditional goodies!!! Yummy yum yum....it's nice to be around people during CNY. We stayed and chatted and ate till 8pm! What a wonderful and long lunch....also went to visit their new home (A+S: it's beautiful, cannot wait till when you move in and we have the first meal in the "favourite room of the house"). Zac as usual is the darling ...

THAT WAS MY CNY!!!

Remnants of the thai feast - Take 2

I enjoyed the dishes I made so much during the thai feast I decided to share the wonderful recipe with you. Afterall, good food is meant to be shared, in more ways than one:

Chicken and Pamelo Salad - serves 6 (if not big fans of Pamelo. If they are like A+S, S then maybe just 4)

Ingredients

Chicken:
Chicken breasts - 2 large ones. Only fresh ones will do please
Coconut milk - diluted with chicken stock or water to make the poaching liquid
Lemon grass - 1 stalk, bruised at ends
Kaffir Lime leaves - 2 pieces

Poach the chicken breasts in the above poaching liquid with the lemongrass and kaffir lime leaves infused into the poaching liquid. Depending on the size and thickness of the breasts, it will take about 10-15 minutes.
Leave to cool in the poaching liquid and shred(by hand) roughly.

Dressing:
2 cloves of garlic
1 stalk of lemongrass
2 dried chillis - soak in water to soften
juice of 1 lime
palm sugar
nam pla - fish sauce

Pound the garlic, lemon grass and chilli into a fine paste with a pinch of salt for abrasion. Add the lime juice, palm sugar and nam pla. The dressing should first taste sweet/salty and then finally tangy with a very faint heat. Adjust accordingly. Next add the cooled poaching liquid to this dressing you have made. The poaching liquid will greatly reduce the acidic tones to the dressing. Adjust again to taste.

To assemble:
Peel 2 fresh pamelo (can be replaced with canned mandarin segments from Waitrose but nothing beats the real McCoy. Get your partner/bf/male friends to peel the pamelo. There is no free lunch in this world!) into the segments and try to losen the segments

Mix dressing with shredded chicken, then mix in the peeled pamelo segments. Add fresh roughly torned mint leaves and coriander. Garnish with fried shallots, deep-fried julienned kaffir lime leaves.
Serve and be delighted for many days/years to come. (as you are sure to crave for it the very next day and the next day after like I did)

THAI FEAST AND MORE TO COME - my way of managing away the stress of the thought of leaving London

I had an incredible dinner party last Sunday at my place. Good food (well I hope my guests enjoyed it!), great company and lots of fun...what more can one ask for?

It was an intimate dinner for 4 + 1 (Zacy boy) and as the company was so good, it went well past midnight with Zac having to have 2 feeds!

I had a thai chinese menu and it included the following:

Dinner for 4 - thai chinese

Deep fried wontons with Nahm Prik sauce

Chicken and Pamelo Salad

Minced chicken and prawn dip with rice crackers

*****

Charsiew

Tamarind prawns

Chiu Chee scallop curry

******

Chocolate fondant with vanilla ice-cream and blueberries

Mint tea

It was as much fun preparing the meal as it was actually eating the food! But the company of A+S (and S) was what made the whole event such good fun. The love for food really bring people together...

It's sad to be leaving London having only met A+S+Zacy boy just in the last month or so. But I'm sure you guys will come visit HK and Uncle S so it's only a matter of time we meet again. There can only be more foodie adventures in HK - I'm waiting for you guys!!!

I've caught the hosting bug so I've decided to host small dinner parties over the next few weeks amidst the packing, selling of flat and enjoying London. I hope with the company of good friends, it makes it the move that much easier on the mind.

So friends, get ready for dinner party invites!

***

New friends, new experiences. The world is so big yet so small...(don't even get me into the degrees of separation here, I think we're only 2 degrees away) and I am grateful to what fate has brought to me so far.

Sometimes we hope so much for what we think we want, but in the process we discover, that maybe what we had hoped for dearly was all but a journey; the things we hoped for bring us on a journey, some people get off somewhere along the way, others get on. But if the journey was never made, you would have missed out so many things you never realised could be possible.

Why do some people take it so hard upon themselves to do the right thing? Sometimes going along with the flow and let things develop and evolve in its own way might not be such a bad idea. How about the "give it a shot"(not literally!) attitude? - should there not be times we allow things to happen and see how it pans out? I am constantly asking/thinking/wondering: what is exactly holding us back?

Enough of my random muses and sketchy thoughts. It's back to the packing and dinner parties!