Yearly Chinese New Year's Reunion dinner, my mum will prepare quite amount of dishes to feed 25 of us. As there are 25 of us(Sons/Son-in-law, daugthers/daughter-in-law, grandsons and granddaughters) so that explained why I have to be back from Auckland to help her. Besides, preparing for this dinner, she also need to offer prayer on the eve of Chinese New Year to the ancestors, it was extremely busy for her on this day as she will get up very early in the morning to start the preparation. Most of the Chinese families have Steamboat for reunion dinner, however my mum decided to have it only on the first day one of Chinese New Year. Some of dishes we had for this year's reunion were roasted chicken, fried prawns, Ngoh Hiang, roasted pork, 琵琶鸭, fried vegetables with abalone, pig's stomach soup and 大盆菜.
This was Ngoh Hiang五香 (five-spice pork rolls wrapped with bean curd skin) specially made by my mum. My mum only prepared this dish during Chinese New Year as this dish required a lot of preparation like cutting the ingredients into fine pieces. She will roll them a day in advance. It is my families' favourite dish. My 4th sister whom does not eat pork, only eat this dish. It was very yummy as mum put a lot of water chestnut as well as a lot of love into this dish.
琵琶鸭 was a duck dish. It was my mum's favourite dish. My 4th sister would usually drive all the way from Pasir Ris to Ghim Moh's Market (Ghim Moh was where I used to live for 21years, and has many fond memories) to get it for mum. My sister bought this duck a day before eve, she has to go there as early as 4am to queue to get this ducks as there were a lot of people buying for Chinese New Year too. I am not a duck person since young.
This is we had an another dish-大盆菜, my 3rd sister had ordered it. She did not want mum to prepare too much dishes, with this dish it cut down the number of dishes mum need to cook and prepare on eve. This was an expensive dish which cost SGD$288, but it was the thought that counts. It has abalones, prawns, sea cucumber, mushrooms, scallops & etc..To be frank, I do not know how to appreciate this dish.
Lastly, we had 年糕 (Glutinous Rice Cake) for our dessert. It was a complimentary gift from the restaurant which my sister ordered the 大盆菜. These were the typical dishes we had for our reunion dinner. Actually, the reunion dinner wasn't about food and dishes that were on the table, it was more of families bonding time where all of us off from our work/activities/studies, gathered together at a same place to do catching up over dinner. All of us have our own life and activities which kept us busy all year round. Reunion dinner/Chinese New Year is the only time for our family's bonding session. To me that is really the true meaning of reunion dinner.
Chinese New Year is completed without these Chinese New Year's cookies and sweets. We had prepared a trolley full of cookies and sweets. The children in our families loved this trolley,
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