I invited four friends over for this year’s reunion dinner. Unlike last year’s elaborate Yong Tau Foo reunion dinner, I wanted to keep this year’s menu simple. Nothing fancy, just dishes that I might cook for myself any other day. So we had:
1) Stir-fried vegetables (broccoli, carrots, snap peas, mushrooms) with chicken.
I really liked the color of this dish. I kept to the common broccoli and carrots because my American friends may not be too adventurous when it came to their vegetables.
2) Tomyam soup with nappa cabbage, carrots, onions, tofu and chicken.
I didn’t have time to take a picture of the soup so here is a recycled old photo of a tomyam soup that I made ages ago. This isn’t a safe dish as it may be too spicy, but at the same time it shouldn’t be totally new since there are some Thai restaurants around. This soup added the “hot, spicy, sour” factor to the meal.
3) Baked chicken wings
I had to include a child-friendly item because a friend was bringing her 9-year-old daughter. But the girl would rather play with my Lego than eat.
4) Steam tofu with green onions and oyster sauce.
This photo was taken at another dinner that I hosted 2-3 months ago. I made a tofu theme dinner that day (i.e., steam tofu, stir-fry tofu puff with mushroom, and tomyam soup with turnip tops and texturized vegetable protein TVP-a soybean product).
Anyway, the steam tofu was served the same way, with green onions, garlic oil and oyster sauce. This was the “fear factor” dish since tofu is not common in this area and some people are afraid of the white cheese-looking item.
I wanted to make this dish to expose my guests to authentic simple Chinese food. I was hoping that my guests would take a step out of their food comfort zone and try the tofu. I think two of them did but one of my guests later told me she didn’t try the tofu. She failed the fear factor test! 🙂
And finally, we had carrot cake (that I baked) and eclairs (that someone brought) for dessert.