I sometimes feel I’ve been bitten by the chinky bug..my past couple of posts have all been ‘in the spirit of chinese new year’. Maybe I’m trying to prove to myself I can do happy canto techno…

Chinese New Year in my family starts with a buffet at some 5 starred hotel. Chinese New Year in my small family now starts with a mad dash to my local chinese supermarket) for some steamboat foodstuff. So last Friday, I rushed down to Wing Lee Hong after work to stock up on fishballs, prawns, noodles, wonton skin, bok choy,fish tofu, tofu and some quails’ eggs. I also bought a pot of hotpot bean sauce, just to see how it tasted like. Being in the rush of the hoardes of chinese people preparing for their new year as well made me feel, if only for a moment, part of a community preparing for the same celebration – just like christmas.

Saturday afternoon started with making the stock for the steam boat to go happily boiling in. It was a simple stock made out of 3 good-sized pork ribs and a couple of cracked peppercorns. It is then left merrily boiling for a good 3-4 hours to get the full flavour out of the marrow and the flesh.

For wonton filling:

1 pound minced pork
2 finely minced water chestunts
A dash or two of Lea & Perrins sauce
A dash of good-quality soy sauce (I import mine from Penang,so sue me)
some dried shitaake mushrooms, finely minced
pepper
some cornflour

In the meantime, defrost all the frozen foodstuff. Make sure that wonton skins, if frozen, are left out for a good 12 hours before you need it – it is NOT usable unfrozen.

Wontons are very easy to make, and much fun as well. Mix the inggredients for the filling well,coating all of the meat with the seasonings. With your fingers, wet two corners of the wonton skin. Scoop a spoonful of stuffing and place it right in the middle, close the corners up so it forms a triangle. Apologies for lack of pictures – it was then that my camera decided to tell me that I am running out of pictures, so I had to be selective.

Its so easy even Bacon can make it .

Oh, don’t forget to hard boil your quail’s eggs as well. I once saw some kwai lous drop the whole egg in shell and all in the steamboat’s stock – DO NOT DO THAT! Imagine all the chicken shit that you would be slurping in addition to your delicious stock.Gross.

Boil the eggs separately, and peel the shell off – that way all the bird crap on the shells are boiled and removed separate from your stock.Quail’s eggs are pretty small, I tend to just boil it for 3 mins and turn the gas off whilst it continues cooking.

ta-da!

Start dropping whatever you want to eat into the boiling stock. Trick is, anything that is floating is cooked and ready to eat, so tuck in! Most people like rice or noodles to go with it as well, but seeing that me and bacon weren’t that hungry we gave that a miss.

Hmm…what’s for dessert?

You might also be interested in these

• welcoming the golden pig..
• Home beckons..
• year year got fish…
• My list
• Gong Xi Fa Cai!!