And the boat sails by…

Yes, like what I said in an earlier post, we had a steamboat dinner on Saturday night, the 18th of September, in conjunction with my girl’s birthday. There were 4 of us altogether – we invited her godmother/aunt, my sister, to join us.

We had the usual suspects…

…nothing new, except for the Foochow fish balls (top right) available frozen from this place here. Perhaps some of you would remember how people would stand in line to buy them whenever there was a food fair in town. We do not have to venture so far now – they are selling these at the fruit & vegetable sundry shop in the next lane round the corner from my house.

Also available at that same shop now is this fish paste – I noticed a Sibu address on the packet but I wouldn’t know whether it was made here or they merely packed it for sale. One thing that caught my attention was that they had pork in the list of ingredients and yes, the fish balls that my missus made using the paste (top left) were very nice. I got the prawns (the ones from Sabah, shell & vein removed), the New Zealand mussels and the seafood tofu (bottom right and left) from there too.

I got this Australian wagyu beef (RM33.50)…

…very thinly sliced, from the fresh mart behind my favourite fish & seafood stall in the neighbourhood and of course, we must have some vegetables…

…in our steamboat and some tang hoon (glass noodles) and spring onions…

…too. I don’t know what spring onions those were that my missus bought – they were huge but sadly, they were not fragrant, not nice at all.

I did buy some sotong (squid) not too long ago and a pack of frozen boiled scallops (RM18.00) too but my missus said she forgot and did not take them out of the freezer so we would have to keep those for another day.

The soup that she prepared…

…using the innards and the unwanted parts of the chicken (head, Parson’s nose, neck, claws/feet and innards) that I bought that day to cook the mee sua and of course, pork bones as well was absolutely awesome – so sweet, so flavourful, so very nice! To start off, she brought it to boil in our multi-purpose cooker with some fish maw, bean curd sticks and sweet corn in it.

When we were all seated at the table, we added as much of everything…

…as we could and put back the lid and waited for it to boil before we started eating and as we ate, we added more of everything else and ate till we were full.

Other than the aforementioned spring onions, I did not like the meat balls my missus made because of the ingredients she added. I prefer plain minced meat rolled into balls, unadulterated. Other than that, I thought the beef was disappointing too. Yes, it was very nice and tender, no problem with that but it did not have that strong beef smell/fragrance that I would look for when going for beef noodles or any beef soup dishes. Other than those, everything else was fine.

I also mentioned in another earlier post that for dessert, we had the rest of the gelato mooncakes…

…that my friend sent to me.

I’m not a fan of snow skin so the two by the side on the right and on the left did not excite me much. I loved the durian…

…with gianduia/gianduja, a chocolate spread containing about 30% hazelnut paste, invented in Turin during Napoleon’s regency (1796–1814), reputed to be Nutella’s sophisticated older cousin. Personally, I would rank the pistachio ice cream with the raspberry yolk, the first one we tried that day, as the Numero Uno and this one comes in as a close second.

So there you have it! Our very simple steamboat dinner at home to celebrate my girl’s birthday and the Mid-Autumn Mooncake Festival, 2021. #staysafe #staywell #stayhome