A mutual friend of ours recently got married and we were very fortunate to be able to get invited to the wedding to witness their blissful marriage at the Four Seasons Hotel. The wedding lunch was a standard eight course meal, ending with a sweet mango & pomelo sago dessert. But because we were all so filled up by the previous courses, we had to leave this dish unfinished and unappreciated.
It’s a long weekend cometh, finally! Have taken some time off work to spend it with the boy because it’s his sixth birthday on 2nd April, and the final one that allows him to take time off from school without it being termed as a truant; his final one before the horrible primary years start.
Double steaming is a common method used in Chinese cuisines to cook soup with ingredients that are expensive (e.g. bird’s nest, herbal soup). This is usually done in a ceramics jar or sometimes even in melons or coconuts which can have their content emptied out to contain the soup with its ingredients. The entire jar / content is placed inside a steamer to steam. The result is a bowl of soup that is well-flavoured and nutritious, both because none of the nutrients are lost due to the heat from the steaming, and also because (if using melon/coconut) the stock absorbs the essence from the melon and coconut which gives it an added layer of flavour. Additionally, the coconut / melon flesh becomes soft and easily scooped out together with the rest of the ingredients.
I didn’t get to take any nice pictures of this recipe because I recall it was meant to be an experiment, a recipe that I was trying out for fun over a rather tiring weekend and as such wasn’t intending to pull out the props, camera, lighting etc.
Sometimes, after a hard day at work (or a not so exciting day which makes it very difficult to trough through the long hours), a bowl of noodles is all it takes to let me wind down and relax.
