My Brother’s Birthday Gathering
Dec 25th, 2007 by Alvin Chong
Alright, alright, I know, a lot of you are already asking, “Where is the second part of the Sibu post?!?!” or “Where the hell is your coverage on Amber Chia”. Just for the record, they are coming! But first, let’s get on with my brother’s 21st birthday gathering. 
Nothing grand really but it is the heart and love of a family that counts. Besides, having your relatives and having good and fresh home cooked food just beats everything else, agreed?
Anyway, having just came back from KL not too long ago and not having tasted home cooked food for eons, I can hardly suppress myself from stealing a bite of my father’s signature dish, Yong Tau Hu, while he was still in the midst of preparing it. Anyway, skipping over to the gathering itself, the crowd arrived right about 7pm. By time everyone was here, we started off by singing the birthday boy a birthday song.
That was followed by the cake cutting ceremony. Thanks to my flash for needing a long time to recharge, I did not manage to take a sufficient amount of pictures.
No, there were no speeches, bla, bla, bla. It’s not typical of us. Therefore, everyone just went straight ahead with food! So, some of you are asking, what is up for food? Then, let me introduce you to the food for the night.
1) Fried Yong Tau Hu
This is my father’s signature dish. It’s basically beancurd stuffed with pork meat. Yes, it does look simple but it takes skills to properly create the aromatic meat. It also takes patience to fry the dish. Ask Clare and she will know just how delicious it is.
2) Home Cooked Mixed Vegetable
This is our own home cooked mixed vegetable. It’s a mixture of button mushroom, quail eggs, celery, prawns, fish balls, meat balls etc. Fresh and healthily stir fried to give a simple to prepare but delicious dish.
3) Satay
This is the pork satay that we bought from Carpenter Street. One of the better tasting satays out there, although not exactly as fleshy as some others.
4) Hakka Sweet Black Sauce Duck
This is the black sauce duck, also home cooked. It tastes sweet. For some reason, having it with blended chilli makes it tastes really good!
5) Ka Chang Ma
This is again a Hakka delicacy. It’s basically chicken cooked with white wine and some kinda herb, which I do not know how to elaborate. People like Clare often tells me she doesn’t like the taste of it and will not take it. It does take some use to, but when you do, you’ll like it. This was prepared by my grandmother at my brother’s request.
6) Pork Leg
Maybe I am just fond of my parent’s cooking but really, this has got to be one of the best tasting pork leg out there. I have tasted a number of other pork leg dishes but I guess it is the difference in ingredients that distinguishes this dish from other similar pork leg dishes out there.
7) Sweet and Sour Pork
This is another pork dish. Only this time, it is sweet and sour. This was prepared by my brother’s girlfriend’s mom. My first time trying this style of sweet and sour pork. Delicious!
8 ) Hakka Style Home Fried Mee
This is the home fried Hakka style mee. I don’t know how to describe the taste. You have just got to try it for yourself.
Hakka people has more tastes to food. Appearances and arrangements are secondary. What matters most is the taste. Some dishes might look dull but they really do taste better than they look.
Last but not least, a birthday is never complete without birthday eggs. These are just simple boiled eggs with slight artificial red colouring. Fret not, because the colouring is pretty harmless.
Well, I guess that is pretty much about it. Yeap, this looks more like a food post than a gathering kinda post. Heck, if a gathering has a lot of good food to share, why not aye? Anyway, that is it for now and enjoy your christmas people!
Friday, 4 April 2008
Hi Alvin,
I have come to your blog as I was doing a search for Hakka recipes.
The photos of those birthday food make me drool so much I feel like
printing and eating them crazy.
Actually, the excerp heading of the piece of blog caught my attention…
Hakka, Chong, Sibu[Sarawak].
Here is my take. I am going to make a request to you. No hurry. It will take some searching/enquiring.
My name is Andrew Yap and living in Melbourne, Australia. I studied in Swinburne Institute of Technology[now Swinburne Uni.] in the late 1970’s.
I am trying to locate an old friend by the name of CHONG TEK KHOON.
He is a qualified accountant. He may be a businessman now. His father is familiar with the Bean-shoot[Ngar Choy] and Pepper business. He may have a sister doing business in the wet market. He had a girlfriend who deal in Wrist Watches. He had worked in Kuala Lumpur in his earlier years as a freshman. He is very good with the MCDONALD’s Family Restaurant business system[learnt in Melbourne while working part-time].
Well, Alvin Chong, I hope you are his son or relative. If not, please try your best to locate him. Is there a CHONG Association over there? I tried to find the WHITE PAGES Telephone Directory for Sabah and Sarawak through the WEB with no luck. Please advise if there is such a directory. He had given me an old address which I have lost as I moved a fair bit in my earlier years.
Yours faithfully,
Andrew