As part of the Cook for Family Initiative campaigned by Daniel, both K & I had some quality time in the kitchen whipping up a storm (ok, almost) and just having some plain good fun with our respective families.

Here’s what me and my family dabbled at this evening –

ENTRÉE

KONG BAK PAU (PORK BELLY BUN) – a joint effort between Mom and I. With Mom’s proven traditional recipe coupled with what I learnt from Momofuku…we “broke our personal best” (pardon my London Olympics mood) – a true example of how teamwork triumphs!

Now, this dish is definitely worth a pictorial summary how it came about –

[LEFT] Seared pork belly ready to plunge into braising liquid to be braised for ~2 hours (I insisted on the oven while my mom insisted on the stove – she won. I still disagree :p)
[RIGHT] Photo taken after we braised, cooled, cling-wrapped, fridged and then de-fridged, sliced. By wrapping and fridg-ing, it helps the pork to retain a good shape for slicing.

[LEFT] These white little soft things….were unfortunately not home-made (we did not have the space and time to do it from scratch this time round). However, I am glad the quality of the paus we got here was pretty good – very soft and tender, I LIKE!
[RIGHT] Pork Belly filled buns topped with spring onions. My parents like to top theirs with some fresh chilli while I like mine either plain or with a slight drizzle of garlic chilli sauce 🙂

This is my favorite picture of the lot because this photo speaks a story: My dad was getting very impatient with me trying to perfect my photography (I needed to get the right lighting/angle in order to bring out the best of the iPhone camera – am sure you know what I mean!!). He actually DID grab a pau before I could snap a picture…and of course I made him put it back onto the plate 😛

MAINS
PAN-FRIED DORY with CAULIFLOWER PURÉE, BROCOLLI and BURNT BUTTER (by Me) – a very simple yet awesome dish. From the pic, it is quite obvious I left out the burnt butter sauce (Buerre Noisette) as I was in such a hurry to serve up – now, I can almost feel my chefs shaking their heads in disdain *sheepish*. As a result, this dish is somewhat incomplete without a sauce to bind everything together – fortunately, the moisture in the cauliflower purée helped!

DESSERT

CREPE SUZETTE (by Me) – a very classic and simple french dessert. I added my own twist by topping it with some sweet potato chips to add some crunch in the texture (Crepe Suz purists are going to shake their heads at this…so I better rename this as Crepe Suzette de P).

Overall – My family & I spent a great Sunday evening preparing and eating this meal together – how priceless! It is something we haven’t done for a long long time given that I haven’t seen them for more than 6 months until a couple of weeks back 🙂

I strongly encourage you to do the same – date your family for an evening of kitchen fun…it will turn out way jollier than you think, trust me!

Read #CookForFamily – K
Read #CookForFamily Initiative