Saturday, January 31, 2009

Greg & Nee's CNY Food Gallery

We do almost all of our Chinese New Year visits on the first & third day. The first day involves squeezing in as many relatives' houses as possible, following a patriarchial hierarchy, starting from both sets of our parents down to our first uncles & so on down to the rest in line.

Whatever that is left over is squeezed into the third day when we do our friends'. And you can imagine that by the third day, it's usually a full day, non-stop marathon. We targeted 12 houses & hit 10 on the third day. Not bad eh? It felt like a bull run.

This year has started out pretty good with cool weather albeit a little rainy. That was perfect for our outings & sleeping in as well. Oh, FYI both of us are not exactly sun people. In the olden days, they call people like us vampires.

Our second day this year was our open house from 11am-4pm. We like to do open house. It's a great way to get everyone to come within a stipulated window of time, rather than having to sit around waiting for little spurts of people, or having to greet them in our pyjamas i they come by too early, or having to rush home immediately just because some guests decided to pop over out of the blue.

This year, I decided to go for catering so that I could take a break from all that baking. I certainly didn't want to jump from one baking marathon to a cooking one. If I did that, the State Sports Council would have awarded me with a SPORTSwoman of the Year award.

These were the flower arrangement from Spring Florist. We wanted a garden feel and they gave us orchids and helicornia. Quite pretty dont you think?

This was where the main setup was. Our walled up porch was converted into this little dining area which confused a couple of kids who were trying to make sense of whether it was a restaurant or a house.


This was entertainment/dining area no. 2 which allowed Greg & I to alternate between our guests, splitting them up, sort of like a crowd control mechanism, in case they fight over the food.


We've had Kuching Park Hotel food quite a number of times before & they have been consistently quite pleasing. The umai was excellent & we'll definitely be bringing it back next year.


However, I can't say the same for the Lamb with black pepper sauce. Somehow, I think nobody touched it at all. This one will be out of our menu.

This was actually quite nice but the brocolli turned slightly soggy and brown after a while due to the continuous heating. So the presentation didn't looked too appealing & thus it wasn't very popular.

Next time we will get butter prawns to replace the lamb and brocolli.

This was Greg's must-have chicken curry which went very well with the bee hoon.


This was the fried bee hoon that went very well with the chicken curry that Greg must have. It was completely gone by about 4pm.


The Braised Seacucumber with mushrooms were excellent. The Sea cucumber was still very crunchy and the mushrooms were really thick and fresh.



The was the dessert department which consisted of my very own homemade cakes. They were also completely wiped out by 4pm.

Nee's Fruit Cake ~ yes this is really my cake because for some reason I just love the smell of rum and fruits. So I made this for myself.



Nee's mango agar agar.


Nee's Choc Brownies



All time favourite ~ Nee's White Choc Macadamia Cheese Cake



Nee's Blueberry Cheese cake.

And this was the eat-cookies-as-you-wait-for-your-turn section.
Nee's Kuih Momo


Ikan Bilis ~ a gift from Aunty Yeo. Do not be fooled by it's simplicity. It is deadly addictive.


Grandma's Traditional Mung bean cookies (Lack Tao Koh) made with traditional patterns from traditional wooden moulds personally carried home from China more than 50 years ago.


Nee's Almond Cookies


Nee's Pineapple tarts.



Grandma's traditional Kuih Bangkit.



Nee's Namyue cookies


And of course, the lapis gallery. This was what I've been doing all this while.

Cheese lapis


Mocha Lapis


Choc Mint Lapis


Prune Lapis


Sancha Lapis

And with that, we officially end our New Year binging ... until Chap Goh Mei of course.

14 comments:

Rei said...

What a spread! *burp! Happy Niu Year to you and your family.

I Am Sarawakiana said...

It is a "Wow" !!
Please may I come next year to your Open House?
Have a wonderful Niu year!!

Denise ^ ChickyEGG said...

wahh....... very very impressed with all ur bakings o !!! ya Kuching almost everyday raining rite? good ar, I like rainy day too! haha

Gong xi Fatt Chai ar!! =)

Anonymous said...

Hi Nee,
Gong Xi Fatt Chai to you. I was impressed to see all your kek lapis. Do you by any chance have the recipe for cheese lapis which is not baked. I've eaten it at one of my cousin's house, it's something like cheese cracker one layer alternating with cream cheese another layer.

Anonymous said...

wah bunchhhhh of foods. It's nice lar. It's been quite a while since i went out got food hunting

Anonymous said...

Hi Rei happy niu year to you too!

Sarawakiana, you are more than welcome. there will always be extra food.

Hi Chicky egg kch is still raining continously. now that my keropok is all done. i am quite happy with the rain. but some places got flooding and some ppl lost their homes. so cannot be selfish and like the rain.

Delia, I had never tasted one before. if you had any photos, let me have a look at what it looks like. but i think it will taste veery good.

Justin, why have you not been out. must be the rain. let us know the good places, greg and I ran out of ideas of where to go liau.

Chocolate Cookies & Candies said...

Nee, may I have the recipe for Kuih Momo? I've been looking and looking and looking for one for the longest time.

Anonymous said...

Marlene, you are not the only one asking. i was thinking of blogging about it next year hehehehe....but since got popular demand, i see how. thanks for asking.

Chocolate Cookies & Candies said...

Nee, I was last in Kuching last year after not being home for more than 10 years. I found a bakery inside Tun Razak building selling Kuih Momo. I bought the last one but was too embarrassed to ask for the recipe. Eating the biscuits remind me of my childhood. Do post the recipe! pretty please :)

Melissa said...

your cakes and cookies looks fabulous! :)

good job on the photography as well!

Anonymous said...

thanks melissa for the nice compliments.

TH said...

tasteful meal! I like to try them too. Going kuching next month!!

YumMum said...

Hi, is it possible that you share the Nee's Kuih Momo recipe? Or maybe you can email me? xy_lotus@yahoo.com

Thanks in advance and have a great CNY ahead.

Regards,
li

Anonymous said...

Well... that's interessting but frankly i have a hard time understanding it... I'm wondering what others have to say....

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