The last night…

Chap Goh Mei is a Hokkien term that means the 15^th night of the New Year. As its name implies, it is celebrated on the 15th, the last night of the Chinese Lunar New Year Festival. In Mandarin, it is called Yuan Xiao Jie (元宵节), which means Prime Night Festival. It is also called the Lantern Festival, which can be confusing to Malaysians seeing how we refer to the Mid-Autumn Festival as the Lantern Festival as well.

That night, the whole family would sit down together to enjoy a lavish dinner, not unlike the Reunion Dinner on Chinese New Year’s Eve, together but for a change, we opted for a steamboat dinner instead and yes, of course, we invited my sister to join us.

These were what we had in the hotpot…

– the giant freshwater prawns (tua thow hay/udang galah) that I bought recently, the abalone that the nice lady at my favourite fish & seafood stall gave to me sometime ago, my girl’s favourite seafood tofu cubes and quail eggs, fish maw, fish balls and fried fish cake that my missus made using the fish paste from Jakar and fish slices/fillet that I bought from the aforementioned fish & seafood stall that morning itself.

I wanted to buy the somewhat expensive pek chio/ikan bawal putih (white/silver pomfret) seeing how it was a special occasion (even though we are not entirely fond of that fish) but there was none and I saw some fish that had been filleted so I asked the lady about it. She said it was “white fish”, great for fish soup and fish noodles – I told her we would be having steamboat and she said this would be perfect for that!

True enough, we loved it a lot, very smooth with no fishy smell at all…and no bones. We did not use all that I bought for the steamboat that night so I told my girl that we would use the rest to make our own fish & chips one of these days. I do think that will be nice.

We also had this pork belly, specially sliced thinly for hotpots…

…some Romaine lettuce and mushroom…

…and tang hoon (glass noodles)…

Once it started boiling and after letting it simmer for a while…

…we started to dig in…

Although it may not be as labour intensive as having to cook all the dishes one by one, it is not that easy getting everything ready for a steamboat dinner. My missus started off with the stock and that entailed boiling a lot of pork bones and simmering the soup to get the flavour out. She also added the water used to cook the fish balls and fish cakes (before frying them lightly) and after all that simmering when it had started boiling, you can imagine how very nice the soup was, so very sweet!

While major activities during Chap Goh Meh for people in China include eating tangyuan (glutinous rice balls) over a grand meal, Chap Goh Mei is the last day that families can toss yee sang together, a symbol of all things auspicious. Of course, we did not have yee sang – that is not the usual traditional practice here in this Foochow town and this was the first time I saw anything about eating tang yuan during Chap Goh Meh. I thought we would only do that once a year during the Dongzhi or Winter Solstice Festival around December.

My sister also saw this on social media so she went and bought these matcha durian ice cream mochi (from Walls)…

…for our dessert, in place of the tang yuan. Yes, it was very nice, very generous with the durian inside but to me, it was very sweet. You will not see me rushing to the shops for more, not when I am on a low-sugar diet.

Another new thing that I’ve learnt this year is how the Peranakan community would eat pengat once a year on Chap Goh Meh. For the uninitiated, you can watch this Youtube video to find out all about it. I didn’t know that because when I was at the fish & seafood stall that morning, the nice lady gave me some yam and tapioca. She said that her ethnic employees went home during the Chinese New Year break and brought back some for her. She insisted on giving me some and if I had known, I could have gone and bought some sweet potatoes and t’nee koi (kuih bakul) to cook out own pengat to eat. Ah well! Next year, perhaps!