Chinese New Year 2008-Goodies

There are many such stalls in Chinatown selling cookies for the festive period. This stall is selling 5 boxes of cookies for $11 but on Chinese New Year Eve, the price will be slashed to just 50 cents a bottle.

Wood Ear Fungus and Mushroom Recipe

Wood ear fungus or "Mu Er" belongs to the mushroom family and known to have antitumour and cholesterol lowering properties. Most mushrooms are beneficial and are fat free and cholesterol free and known to fight against diseases (such as cancer), so start eating mushrooms.The mushroom/wood ear fungus that I ate, are purchased from grocery shops and are tested and approved by our strict food authority. If you will do wild mushrooms picking, please do be careful as some mushrooms are posionous and can easily misidentified as woodear fungus.

(Very Chinese Dish)-Braised mushroom with woodear fungus and lily buds and tim chok.

Ingredients:
100 gm Dried Chinese mushrooms
Dried lily buds
Tim Chok(Sweetened Bean Curd Strips)
Dried wood ear fungus
Black Moss (Fa cai)
2 pcs dried oyster
1 clove garlic (minced)
1tbsp of cornflour

Seasoning
1 1/2 tbsp Oyster sauce or to taste
2 tbsp of chinese wine
salt to taste

Method:
1. Soaked all the dried ingredients (except fa cai) with boiling hot water until soften.
2. For the mushrooms, cut the stem off of each mushroom and if the mushroom is too big, cut into bite sizes. For the lily buds, cut the top harder part off (like a black tip) and tight it into a knot. For woodear fungus, just cut it into smaller pieces. Cut the tim chok into half pieces.
3. Marinate mushroom, dried oyster with garlic and 1 tbsp of cornflour.
4. Boil some water. When boiled, add the marinated mushrooms, woodear and seasoning. Let it simmer for about 1 1/2hour . Adjust taste of oyster sauce and salt.
5. Lastly add in the lily buds,tim chok during the last 15 mins and add fa cai during the last 5 mins and let it simmer for 5-10 mins.
Serve hot!
Note: For dried wood ears, soak them in warm water till soft. They will expand to up to five times their initial dry size. Then rinse off any dirt carefully.

Teochew Porridge Buffet at Joaquim Buffet Restaurant, Suntec City

We had Teochew Porridge Buffet at Joaquim Buffet Restaurant, Suntec City. Although it is teochew porridge buffet, they do have hainanese, cantonese and taiwanese specialities too. It costs us $9.90 nett during weekdays and it is slightly more pricer for weekend. There are more food, but I just share some photos of the food we eat.

There are many such stalls in the restaurants. They are part of the display sets for buffets.

Sweet potato porridge - this is good if you dont feel like eating rice. Sometimes, when I dont feel well, I will eat this porridge, it is not oily and dont have much ingredients.

Yam rice

Soya Sauce Chicken

Thailand fish cake

Very soft peanuts, goes well with porridge.

"Chai Poh" Omelette. Chai Poh means preserved vegetables. It is on the salty side. Also goes well with porridge.

Fried Chicken Wings

Kiam Chye - Very salty preserved vegetables.

Assorted braised food - beancurd, beancurdstick, pork belly.

Achar - this is our local pickle with sweet and sour taste..yummy.
Hae Bee Hiam - Dried shrimp chillied, my favourite.

Mapo tofu - this is a taiwanese specialities, it is also known as spicy bean curd. Actually this dish is so named because legend had it that there was this widow who has a pock marked face and her bean curd dish is so delicious and so people named it after her. Ma means disfigured face with pock marks and Po meant old woman. Sometimes it is nice and interesting to know the story of your food.

This is braised chicken feet. Hmmm...I never like chicken feet but I dont mind frog legs...hahaha

For dessert, this is one of my favourite. Bulot Hitam or Black Porridge.Joaquim Buffet Restaurant
Level 1 Suntec Singapore (Convention Centre), Singapore
Mon – Fri
11am - 3pmSat, Sun & Public Holidays11am - 4pm

Nian Gao

It is the time of the year that this bakery shop comes alive. This bakery shop is known as Da Zhong Guo. The only time you can see long queues at this bakery shop is before Chinese New Year (popular for their Nian Gao) and before Moon Cake Festival (popular for their moon cakes).

For those who believed in the Kitchen God, it is a must to offer Nian Gao to the Kitchen God one week before the Chinese New Year. As the Nian Gao is make of glutinous rice and tasted very sweet, so that the Kitchen God after consuming the cake will report sweet things to heaven. That is the time when the Kitchen God will report to the Jade Emperor in Heaven about the characters of every household. (It is something like he is making a list of who is good or who is bad). To know more about the story of the kitchen god:click here