Tuesday, October 31, 2006

The Syawal Event

Raya (Eid) has been tiring but good.

My menu for the first day of raya was the normal compulsory raya food: nasi himpit, pulut, rendang, kuah kacang and kuah kelia. No surprises there. But my husband wanted one dish that is different, so, as recently I made Wantan Mee (however is the correct spelling) for iftar and we thought it was quite good; we decided that it was good enough to serve for raya.

I wanted to make my own wantans but my husband was kind enough to dig deeper into his not so deep pockets to buy some frozen seafood ones for me (Made in Malaysia and complete with the Jakim ‘Halal’ sign, pic below) in a nearby Chinese supermarket which we recently discovered. So I did not need to prepare the wantan fillings that raya morning nor was I forced to roll the wantan skins and shape them into something becoming and appetizing, for all I had to do was take the big box of frozen wantans out of the fridge, thaw them for awhile and deep fry them, to be eaten hot with the noodles in hot wantan soup, along with cooked vege (sawi) and some shredded chicken – all of which was very, very easy indeed to prepare.

I will definitely do a repeat performance of this dish sometime in the future because of its simplicity and taste. Fortunately for us, our guests loved them too, at the very least because it was a little different.

For dessert, I made a batch of cream puffs, dark cherry cheesecake, peach pudding and some fresh cinnamon rolls. I know, I know. I overdid it a little but we were expecting quite a few people and I added the peach pudding at the last minute, plus, we intended to give away some of the food anyway. Saying that, the cream puffs (just the shell – still not filled with the cream filling) ended up in a large container in my kitchen cabinet because my table was already overflowing with plates of food – I ended up giving the puffs away later (with the filling, of course) and slices of this and that later to a few friends who mentioned that they loved my desserts. That was the initial intention anyway.

Therefore, I am pleased to announce that nothing much was wasted, except perhaps for the final piece of pulut and last piece of roll which I discovered last night, already mouldy in my cake container. I’m not sure about the food that I gave away though, my friends may in turn throw them away in their bins because there were obviously so much food in everyone’s house during raya – I can’t say I am surprised if that happened, although I would have to say that it would be a real waste indeed because the food I prepared was bloody damn good, people!

Permit me to say so myself since my dear readers could not taste my raya fare and therefore will have to depend on my esteemed judgement about the matter.

He he he he.

With all that food I prepared, I actually had breakfast on Hari Raya morning at the neighbours’. My Bangladeshi neighbours invited us to come first thing in the morning because the husband of the house had some things to do at his uni (he is a PhD student, you see,) so he asked us to visit early in the morning. And my husband agreed to go there at 9, BEFORE I finished my own chores at home. After tasting each one of the delicious delicacies they served me on the floor of their kitchen, I rushed back home, just only remembering that I have left my bread dough for too long and unfortunately when I reached home, I found that it has tripled in size. The dough has not been very cooperative from the start so why would it cooperate with me at that point, I had thought. Needless to say, I forced it into submission and it turned into the cinnamon roll I wanted anyway.

Our guests only started coming in the afternoon and then they didn’t stop coming until it was time for the Maghrib prayers, albeit one family at a time (luckily for me), except for a friend who brought 3 other families with him, that is. After that, it was time for us to visit our friends. In truth, I was too tired to go out but it was RAYA after all and we had to visit other people too or else it wouldn’t be raya now, would it?

We ended up coming home after midnight that night. My youngest was already nodding off in the car, my poor baby had to sleep in his baju raya that night because we didn’t want to disturb his sleep, plus I would be lying if I didn’t say I was too tired to change him anyway.

All in all it was a pretty festive and cheery raya. I'm sorry that I can't elaborate any more at the moment because really, even thinking of Raya makes me feel tired, so, all that I can say is; here's hoping that you also had a wonderful raya like I did.

5 comments:

CheAyu said...

Who took the last picture? Hasan ke?

Halwafy said...

Haah...Hasan. Banyak jugak gambar dlm blog ni dia ambik sebab he likes to take gambar 'suasana'...gambar yg orang lain tak terpikir nak ambik but useful for my blog :)

The Hand That Holds The Quill... said...

both the cheesecake and noodle look delicious! ;)~~

Halwafy said...

Yes flowerin, looking at the cheesecake makes me want to make another one...come to think of it I have one more tub of cheese and the topping in my cabinet..yum...sedap tau!

cutiepie said...

hey.. selamat hari raya..the cheese cake looks tempting..yum yum