CNY Day 7 Lei Cha

The 7th day of the Lunar New Year is a celebration of everyone's birthday. And it is customary for the Hakkas to eat Lei Cha or Lui Cha on this day. I'm not Hakka, but I thought it would be good fun to eat Lei Cha on this auspicious day. And so I ordered 2 packets of Lei Cha from my colleauge, to be delivered on Day 7 of CNY this year. I also intended for SIL to try our Sarawakian version of Lei Cha.

As soon as we got our order the other day though, our whole staffroom was shocked and disappointed with the portion of the Lei Cha. It seemed that the portion did not match the price of RM7.00. A few of my colleagues weren't even full after they'd finished the entire packet of the rice! Some were also disappointed with the amount of soup that came with the rice.

My portion of Lei Cha

Well, my packet of rice felt very light. But when I emptied it into a bowl, I did get a sufficient amount of rice. My complaint was the vegetables - we were led to believe that there were 7 types of vegetables or ingredients to go with the rice. But because the vegetables were all mixed together, we couldn't tell whether there were really 7 different types at all! 

2 days on, we were still talking our disappointment with the Lei Cha - mainly about the shrunken portion and the number or types of vegetables used. Well, I just thought they weren't very creative with their ingredients. Sure, local veggies may be expensive and in limited supply during the CNY season. But there could be other substitutes .... i.e. imported cabbages and carrots and leeks were in abundance in the market. So were there tofu and anchovies. Really a far cry from what it used to be when I last ordered it at the end of last year ... 

The ingredients used to be so generous when I first ordered Lei Cha from this colleague! 

And so I began hunting for the recipe for the Lei Cha broth ... and I think the best recipe was this one from Malaysian Vegetarian Food. There are pictures of the herbs on the blog and I think it would be a good guide should I ever want to experiment making my own. I'd like to keep a copy of the recipe here for my own reference.

Ingredients
Use a pair of sharp scissors,snip off the young leaves of the following herbs:

50 g    Mugwort
20 g    Sawtooth coriander(cut into 1 ” Strips,using scissors)
20 g     Thai Basil
5  g     Perilla
5  g     Elephant foot grass( cut into 1″ strips,using scissors
1 tbs of green tea leaves(dry toasted) or Japanese green tea powder
1/2 tsp mushroom powder(optional)

Notice the total weight of the picked herbs is 100 g.
Do not cut or chop the herbs using knife as action like this will result in bruises on the leaves.
Wash the herbs thoroughly and proceed to the next step immediately.

Method
Prepare 1 cup of boiling water in the wok.

Plunge the herbs into the boiling water and bring to boil for 2 minutes.This is to prevent the leaves from turning black due to oxidation when the cut surface gets in contact with the oxygen in the air.
Add another 1/2 – 1 cup of  bottled water and allow it to cool.
Blend the herbs with 1/4 cup of groundnuts and 1/2 tbs of toasted green tea leaves.Do not add too much tea leaves which will make the soup looks black.
A jade green herbal paste is now ready for the lei cha soup.
To prepare the lei cha soup,just add 3 tbs of jade green lei cha paste to 1 cup of hot tea.The concentration of the tea is up to individual.

Preparing the bitter paste
Ingredients
10 g Kulixin
5 g Daun Capa(optional)
5 g Pegaga(Optional)

Method
Steps for preparing bitter paste is the same as above except water to be added is 1/4 cup of water.
Do not add groundnuts to this bitter paste.
Add the bitter paste according to personal flavour.

*****

One of these days, I really have to try making my own lei cha.

Anyway, back home on that day, I heated up the soup for SIL; and she poured it onto her rice and ate it drenched. Well, thankfully she liked the rice and the soup. :)) 

Happy CNY 2018!

Happy CNY of the Dog! This year, I wasn't really in the mood to bake, and yet I did force myself to make something .... so due to my half-hearted efforts, the cookies did not turn out as nice.

My bakes

On the top was green tea marble cookies. I think the shade of the green section of the cookie was too light, and the cookie was generally overbaked. I'd reduce some more sugar as I found it too sweet. I used this recipe here. 

Below that was the Parmesan Cheese Cookie - which I quite liked. I used this recipe, and was generally quite happy with the texture of the dough and also how it turned out after baking. Quite yum and would make this again. 

I used this recipe to make the nastar pineapple rolls, which I'd used for the past 2 years. This year, I ran out of condensed milk and substituted it with sugar. I don't know whether that affected the dough or not, but I found that this year, the dough seemed softer than ever ... and it was difficult to manage. As a result, the shape of the pineapple rolls were not so nice, and the pastry was crumbly after the bake. 

In fact it was so difficult to manage that I gave up halfway through. To the remaining dough, I added some chopped cranberries, mini chocolate chips and chopped hazelnuts, shaped them into balls and baked them ... heh ... tasted much like shortbread. :)) 

Snacks

The other thing I liked was the baked peanuts with brown sugar. Just sprinkle brown sugar on the peanuts and bake them over low temperature till browned ... sweet and crunchy and yum. :)) 

My aunts came over for dinner on CNY eve ... and well, they were looking forward to my "special" dishes. Heh. But there were none. I'd only bought the satay and made the durian cheesecake.

 Our reunion dinner spread ... all homecooked except for the satay which I'd bought ... 

My favourite dishes this year were the steamed garoupa and the garlic scapes stirfry. My durian cheesecake also did not turn out as well this year .... I did not follow the exact measurements and did not put in enough gelatin .... so cheese layer was too soft to handle as well. 

Pretty quiet meal for us .... pretty quiet day today as well. Looking forward to playing with my nephew tomorrow evening, when they come home. :)) 

Tooth Extraction

01 Feb 2018. Today at 3.35 p.m., I am one tooth short. I'm so sad.

It happened when I was in Sri Lanka. My tooth ached real bad when I was in my third or fourth day of the trip. I took painkillers, but the pain persisted. It later went away, so that even when I'd come back home, I did not immediately go and see the dentist. Until my gum got swollen one weekend, and I was forced to go and see Dr. Wong.

Bad news. Dr. Wong said that my tooth had an obvious crack and could not be saved. She advised me to extract it. Meanwhile, she gave me antibiotics for my gum infection.

Today when I went back to her, she confirmed that the tooth could no longer be saved. She proceeded to extract it ... and the process was faster than I thought. It took only about 30 seconds and the tooth was out.

"Done?" I asked her. I thought it would take longer ..

"Yes," she confirmed.

I am now considering dental implant. Dr. Wong said I could do it after 6 months and gave me the contact for Dr. Tay. I would call Mrs. Tay for appointment - 019-4391021.