Family breakfast – East meets West

Mum cooked up a big pot of pork rice porridge (some of you call it “congee”, in our family we call it “chok”). The porridge was was full of flavour, cooked with balls of seasoned pork mince and pork ribs on the bone. I couldn’t wait to have some. Rice porridge is one of my favourite dishes of all time.

To go with the porridge, we had the usual trimmings. This included yow char kwai (fried Chinese crullers). These oily fried sticks of dough have a macabre story behind them which makes them really appealing to me! Dad snipped the dough sticks into bite-sized chunks.

We also had fried garlic – I could just bury my nose into this for hours, it smells so wonderful.

My mum’s favourite porridge accompaniment, fresh coriander. I don’t like the smell or flavour of fresh coriander, so I never have any.

Another porridge accompaniment that I love – fresh ginger. Sometimes when I’m unwell, Mum makes me a batch of super comforting, super delicious fish and ginger porridge. It’s the best thing ever when I’m feeling sick and sorry for myself (well, besides junk food, which always make me feel better :)).

And of course, spring onions.

So this was my first bowl of porridge, complete with everything except the coriander, with soy sauce and sesame oil. I started with East, moved on to West, then went back to East and my second bowl of porridge. :)

Mum also baked a loaf of bread.

My cousin Carol made a big batch of scones. She brought along butter, jam and cream to go with them. We also had my sister-in-law’s homemade marmalade to go with the scones and the bread.

There was fresh rockmelon (canteloupe) too.

Outside on the patio, my brother-in-law M was frying bacon on the barbecue.

Jac was next to M frying up eggs on the barbie.

Jac cooked most of the eggs with soft yolks, but she also cooked some “over easy”. She prefers her eggs over easy herself.

Little Ruby and I sat right next to the dish of bacon where we could admire its beauty and breathe in its amazing aroma. And help ourselves to more. :)

Here’s another view of the bacon. You may notice the sauce bottles in the background – one is a jumbo-sized bottle of tomato sauce, the other is sriracha chilli sauce.

As the bacon was frying, my Auntie S turned up with the sausages – chilli beef, beef and chipolatas. M got to work cooking them on the barbecue too.

Here are the chilli sausages, which were very popular, especially with my English second cousins. We haven’t seen our relatives from England very much over the years. It was nice to meet a couple of second cousins for the first time. The boys’ very proper English accent reminded me of Prince William. :D

The chipolatas were fat little juicy things!

While the bacon, sausages and eggs were being fried outside, my brother was busy in the kitchen making pancakes. He makes them thin crepe-style and they are very light and delicate. After my first bowl of porridge I grabbed myself a couple of pancakes, some bacon, a chipolata and a fried egg. Of course I drizzled maple syrup all over the pancakes, bacon and chipolata.

I don’t think I could decide between East and West that morning!. Everything was totally delicious.

So here’s the thing – I can’t remember why we had a dish of butter cubes on the table. I presume it was for spreading on the bread or the scones. I didn’t have any of the butter, I just photographed it!

There was also East dessert for those who wanted it – hot red bean soup, which is served with coconut milk. Jac liked this very much. I’m not a fan of hot sweet bean soups, which we used to have at home when I was a kid. My late grandma often made green bean soup on weekends when we lived in Malaysia.