The end…

Chap Goh Meh or the 15th Night of the 1st Month of the Chinese Lunar Year marks the end of the festivities held to usher in and welcome the brand new year, and this year is The Year of The Goat. The (extended) family would sit down together once again for a grand dinner, not unlike the Reunion Dinner on the last day of the old year, the eve of Chinese New Year’s Day.

However, the sad thing is these days, families are not so close-knit – not many are staying together in the same house or in the same town and they may be scattered all over the state, country or even the whole world. Some may come home for the festival but with their work commitments, most would have made their way back to their respective stations leaving, perhaps, only the old parents alone at home. Probably it is because of this reason that many do not hold the aforementioned dinner anymore these days…or maybe because everyone would be busy working so they would not have the luxury of time and maybe because the old folks at home are no longer able to cope or to cook, many would just book a table at a restaurant outside and sit down and enjoy the dinner together.

Well, my missus and I have both retired so we would have a lot of time on our hands and I offered to cook this time around seeing that she had done her part for the Reunion Dinner and also for the Chinese New Year’s Day dinner with my in-laws. Of course, one must not expect anything special as I am usually the one taking shortcuts and looking for the easy way out like how I cooked my sambal prawns with petai…

I also fried the Penang laksa noodles with leek and bak kua (barbecued meat)….

…that I cooked not too long ago and found that it was really very nice. Initially, everyone avoided it, opting for the plain white rice instead, probably thinking that it was the dry version of the celebrated Penang hawker delight so I had to explain that it was the name given to the type of noodles used and it was not anything like that.

I boiled the heads of the prawns and the shell to get the stock with which I cooked a lovely clear soup with Chinese cabbage, meat balls, quail eggs and button mushrooms. I did not remember to take a photograph of it though. Other than that, I had TWO very big ikan buris (or ikan lajong in Iban) in the fridge. I read somewhere that one should not cut the fish served for the Reunion Dinner so in keeping with the tradition, I deep-fried the two whole and even with my not-very-big wok, I managed to do so…

…pretty well, I must say. I did not have a plate big and long enough so I served them in a tray wrapped with aluminium foil together with the sauce that my mum and the rest in the family would prepare to eat with this particular type of fish.

She would pour away the oil used to fry the fish leaving just a little bit in the wok and then she would heat it up again and fry some thinly-sliced  shallots it in. Once done, she would add soy sauce to the oil and shallots and that was it…

On my part, I did add some sliced fresh chili as well.

My missus did say she was going to fry the leftover ngor hiang and serve but I noticed that she had marinated some chicken wings as well so I guessed she was going to bake those…and when I saw her taking out some more chicken from the freezer, I knew what she was up to. If you know the story of the Arab and the Camel, you would know what happened to the Arab and you can jolly well guess the end of the story.

This was what we had for our dinner that night from one angle…

…and this was from the other angle…

Nothing much, nothing fancy but what mattered most would be the fact that we were able to sit down together with family and friends to eat this significant dinner and enjoy the cheer and delight of one another’s company.

How was your Chap Goh Meh celebration? Care to share?