Chinese New Year Family Reunion Dinner

Tradition!!!  The family reunion dinner every CNY eve is one of the most important family day in most Chinese Malaysian homes.

I know we have been in Melbourne forever now, but its just something that we still continue to do even though mom is no longer with us.  Hopefully, the Chinese half part of Becky will still continue to carry this tradition on now that her other half is Filipino when they both start a family together.


My contribution for 2015 CNY dinner

Mom would cook at least 10 different dishes, but she had a couple of maids to help cut, chop and shred.  I only have me, I and myself... although there is "3" of us, but I only managed to serve 8 different dishes, but its only for 4 of us.  I know, another myth is that the more left overs you have, there will be plentiful for the next year.  As we exit the Year of the Horse to welcome the Year of the Goat so at the l3th hour, we decided to include EM and FW as they are now part family too.  Just so happy they were both able to join us at very short notice.  Also a good opportunity for mother and son to catch up before B & R goes over to Hobart for a mini-moon leaving on CNY Eve, another reason why we had it earlier.




Rainbow Salad aka Loe Sang aka Yee Sang

The Rainbow Salad was our entrée and highlight of the evening.  It was the most time consuming dish to prepare although no cooking whatsoever is involved.  It only has lots of fine shredding required but I also half cheated with a shop bought box of pre-packaged pickled condiments.  All up it was colourful and looked really inviting and when prepping, the last count was close to 18 different ingredients on this plate and when served, it was definitely over 18!!!


Hoong Hoong - means Red Red Pavlova

I spent a couple of days shopping, cutting, chopping, shredding and knowing everyone enjoyed themselves, which they did, has been worth my while slaving over the stove!

We ended the evening with my mixed berry compote concoction drizzled all over my pavlova.  Its CNY, so its got to be Red Red Red ... Red for prosperity, health, wealth, and all sorts of good fortune.  We had to have at least some red somewhere, so I chose strawberry red - I think my pavlova truly represented an Aussie CNY celebration for us!!!

GONG XI FA CAI