Colin Goh and Woo Yen Yen

Just some snaps from this year’s Chinese New Year makan!

On the first day, we had a small cookout at our place in Brooklyn with some old friends and some new ones. In honour of the Year of the Pig, the menu was a Trio of Ter: tau yew bak (belly pork, eggs and soya bean cakes brewed in dark soy sauce), nyonya chap chye (stewed cabbage and vegetables in pork broth) and bak kut teh (pork rib soup)… and our friend Cheryl brought some amazing cookies made with bacon fat, which were delicious but probably set back out cholesterol by several years!

(Above, L-R: Yen, Terence, Serena and Soon Chung)

(L-R: Michelle, Jennifer, Lucas, George & Eddie)

And we also had yusheng at the Penang restaurant in Manhattan’s Chinatown with some other friends:

The sheer diversity of the Chinese people was impressed upon us by our friend from Beijing, Lei Lei, who was visiting NYC to catch the Armory Show and the latest film releases. Yusheng was just unknown to a ‘lao Beijing’ like her, since it’s a very Southern concoction. She also doesn’t really refer to it as the ‘Chinese New Year’, but rather the ‘Spring Holiday’.

Hope you all had as pleasant a New Year’s as we did!

For our friends out there who’ve requested it, here’s my recipe for tau yew bak, which is a synthesis of 3 different recipes:

TAU YEW BAK

(full disclosure: this isn’t a pic of my dish - I forgot to snap it that night. But this one looks pretty close)

Tau kwa (hard soya bean cakes)
2 tbl oil
2 tbl sugar
6 cloves garlic, lightly bashed
2 star anise

21 oz belly pork, cut into pieces
10 hard boiled eggs

A:
2 tbl light soya sauce
4 tbl dark soya sauce
8 fl oz boiling water
½ tsp salt

1. Fry tau kwa tll lightly browned on all sides
2. Heat wok with 2 tbl oil to fry sugar till light golden.
3. Add star anise and garlic, fry for 1 minute.
4. Add A and bring to a boil
5. Add pork and cook briskly for 20 mins till pork is well done
6. Add eggs and simmer for ½ hour till pork is tender
7. Add tau kwa 10 mins before pork is tender, and simmer for 5 mins after that

Note: I played fast and loose with all the above steps, and relied more on taste at different points of the cooking…

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