I learned from the best…

My late aunt used to cook this very nice butter chicken and potato soup and the other day, Sunday, I decided to cook that to bring over to my parents’ place for our Chap Goh Meh family dinner, the 15th Night of the Chinese Lunar New Year that signifies the closing of the festive season.

Firstly, you boil two Bombay onions in water together with a handful of peppercorns. In the meantime, you melt a bit of butter in a pan and lightly fry your pieces of chicken in it…and then you transfer the chicken into the now simmering water. Peel some potatoes and cut into thin slices and add them in – boil until cooked…and add salt and msg according to taste. Garnish with Chinese celery (daun sup) before serving…

However, when I cooked it that day, I added a chicken stock cube to the water…and I also threw in a few of those red wolfberries. When it has cooked, I added some white fungus and hardboiled quail eggs…

I did not add salt or msg as when I tasted the soup, it was very sweet and savoury enough. Really nice! My daughter used to love it a lot whenever we dropped by for lunch or dinner at the ol’ kampong house and my aunt happened to cook it…

For our Chap Goh Meh dinner, I also made popiah (spring rolls) and kuih pai tee (top hats)…

…and when I went to the market that morning, I saw one HUGE ikan buris. This is a river freshwater fish which is beginning to get quite rare and though it used to be dirt cheap when I was a child, it now costs a bomb – if you are lucky enough to come across one, that is. There are usually some small ones available at the Jungle Produce Market here and those are cheaper but they are not so nice. The simplest way to cook it is to deep fry and eat with soy sauce. That, in itself, is heavenly enough…and that was exactly what I did for our Chap Goh Meh dinner…

The one I bought cost RM25 which really was a good buy as my parents enjoyed it tremendously and was full of praises. It was so fresh…and there was so much flesh…

Imagine – the one-time humble ikan buris is now worth serving at the dinner table on such an auspicious occasion as a Chap Goh Meh dinner! Time certainly has changed a great deal, hasn’t it?