25th July 2009

Woke up quite early this morning, at first daddy asked if we wanted red star dim sum, but both my sis and I think its very lay chey cause we have to walk quite a distant from either the bus stop or the train station before reaching. After discussing, we decided on going to Commonwealth for breakfast. When we were there, my parents said that they wanted Koufu, but my sis wanted Long John, and after some negotiating, my parents decided to give in. Went over to Sheng Siong for grocery shopping after breakfast, having steamboat tonight so we have to buy the ingredients, on top of that we have to get the stuff needed for tomorrow praying ready too. Was feeling really tire after we are done, but I have no choice but to start prepare the ingredients(steamboat) and make 算盘子, which is a hakka dish that Popo which is my granny loves. Mama helped me out in the process and by the time we are done, its already dinner time, so we had our steamboat and some family bonding time afterwhich.

Steaming the yam instead of following Popo's recipe of boiling it, this way, the yam would not lose the sweetness and taste in the process of cooking..

This is what the yam paste looked like after adding tapioca flour to the smashed yam. You have to add the flour when the yam is still piping hot, so burned right little finger in the process..

算盘子, this is the uncooked version.

We have to cook the 算盘子 before keeping it in the fridge for the final step which was to be done tomorrow morning.

The ready cooked 算盘子, tomorrow morning we would have to stir fry it with ingredients such as minced pork, mushroom, beansprouts and more, before it is finally done.

Vegetable we have for steamboat, Romania lettuce and Tang O with my sis favourite yuan sway.

Steamboat: Inclusive of prawns, pork slices, promfret slices, hotdogs, egg tofu, bamboo clams, quail eggs, crabmeat, honjinmeishi and enoki mushrooms and etc.

Tom Yam Soup, the soup itself is already very nice without the ingredients, this time daddy used both tom yam cube and paste instead of the just the usual cube, so its a lot of more tasty