For most of us, it is our fourth invitation to a gourmet dinner at Vincent’s place.
We were also delighted to meet up with Willie Ooi and his lovely wife Mun Ying.
Our gracious host, Vincent brought up his near perfect “sio bak” (roast pork belly) for appetizer. It has all the three main ingredients of a sure winner “sio bak” – crispiness, crunchiness and juicy-tenderness!
It is so good that there is no need for any sauce although it does go well with the wine provided!
Dinner was many magnificent dishes served in a round table. There were steamed prawns in egg white, sambal goreng with petai, chicken and squid, pecal, bian chee, ark or (yam duck) and tau eu bak.
There’s this little known (at least to most of us!) dish called “bian chee”. Looks simple with small cubes of potatoes, carrots, onion and chicken (or pork). Supposedly goes well with the accompanying fried eggs. Thanks Cewie, we love it!
We also got a taste of Pecal, the equivalent of the Malaysian gado-gado. It is a traditional Javanese salad of mixed veggies in peanut sauce. Very appetizing indeed. The other dishes, in particular, the thick gravy ark or (yam duck) and tasty tau eu bak (braised pork belly in dark soya sauce) were simply outstanding.
There were four desserts to make it a delicious dozen dishes in all!! Raymond Wong, who was back from Guangzhou brought along some flavourful rojak from Bukit Mertajam. Mun Ying complimented the dinner with her nutritious white fungus tong sui with gingko nuts. And Cewie rounded it up with tor tau jin th’ng (peanut soup) and bee kor moy (black glutinous rice dessert). Most of us were already full with the round-table full of dishes earlier but we simply couldn’t resist making multiple trips to the refreshing tong sui pots!
Thanks Vincent and Cewie for the invite. We truly appreciate your generosities and we had a great time together. I am inclined to remember this quote from Hop & Stock, a coffee joint in The Hague, “Don’t count the calories, remember the memories!”
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