Date: Feb 15, 2021

This year is a year of Pandemic. But the Pen Cai still looks the same as usual. 用心去煮就会好吃了。

The only hard work of cooking Pen Cai is the preparation of all the ingredients.

This is the ingredients list. And the order of food going inside the Pen Cai.

I always go to Tiang Bahru market on that day I wanted to prepare the Pen Cai. Reach there 6:30am while there are still car park space.

Always I will come back with a lot of stuffs…

First you place a layer of Sesame Oil to wipe the wok. Then, you cut the carrots, while radish as well as the pumpkin into triangle cubes. Fill it up at the most bottom layer.

Then, added in the leeks, the fish maw, dried scallops (soak in water for a while). Those hard stuffs…

How many ingredients to put in there is totally up to you. As I said, the preparation will takes about an hour for cutting, soaking these ingredients.

Then, you cut these.

The sea cucumbers, Chinese sausages, Chinese blood sausages, dried oysters, pork tendons…

See how big the dried oysters I got this year. So big. But my wife says it is too sinful to eat such huge dried oysters. She prefers the small medium size.

I usually will throw in some sashimi grade big prawns I got from Medi-ya seafood section.

Cut the cabbages …

Fatt Cai (hairy veggies), all kinds of mushrooms, leaves of leeks…

Then you cover it with the cabbage or Pok Choy.

Then put fatt choy at the side, tofu in the middle, and perhaps the most important ingredients of all, the century eggs… I used 6 of them, and cut it and stuff it there. The dried oysters, the tendons are goes in.

Place the sea cucumbers, the prawns and the braised abalone. I put two cans of it. So you have about nice 14-16 abalones in it. And don’t waste the juice of the braised abalone. Dump both sauce into it.

Then comes the most challenge part. How to stuff the reminding ingredients into the pot. So we have braised Abalone, the roasted pork, the sausages, the mushrooms, goji berries too. As long as the pot cover still can cover the wok, you are ok.

Add some chicken stocks.

I added Japanese Mirin too. As well as abalone sauce, oyster sauce.

Tada…. it is done.

All you need to do is to cover it, put it onto the stove with small medium fire, and stew it for 1 hour like that.

1-hour later, it is done, every thing cook, and superior soup. My 2021 Pen Cai.

I have been cooking this Pen Cai for many many years. The special wok I used is Amway’s iCook flat bottom wok. It’s vapor seal technology, makes cooking the Pen Cai more easy.

And the final product. 2021 Pen Cai.

Of course, this year, my reunion dinner only have my sisters and my niece and nephews who stays in Singapore coming over. But we have lots of fun.

This year, I also ordered some food from Yaowarat Seafood.

The hairy cockles.

The tasty satay beef.

The Special Thai Seafood XO soup.

The Black Pepper crabs.

The Hokies Mee.

The seafood fried rice too.

Not to forget the big pot of Fuchow Red Wine Chicken with black fungus served with Setiawan mee Sua.

The Thai food is ordered from their facebook site.

The wine of the day is this. Which I called the holly water. Why? See who and where makes the wine. Hahahaha

Yup, you didn’t see it wrong. From Israel, Jerusalem Hills. It is a very nice wine.

That wraps up my reunion dinner dishes of 2021. And I enjoyed eating my Fuchow red wine chicken mee sua.