The most appetising dish in Chinese cuisine can neither be found in the Imperial menus nor famous Chinese restaurants anywhere. Although the ingredients used may sound disgusting to some, it is those very ingredients that make the soup of this unique dish tasty. Chai boey, literally translated from the Chinese Hokkien dialect, means leftover food.

That is exactly what is used – food leftover from a feast, and stewed in a big pot the next day, or on the next weekend. The leftovers can be anything from abalone, scallops, roast pork, roast duck, lor bak (5 spice pork roll), lup cheong (waxed sausages) to chap chai (mixed vegetable dish). When Dad was around, we usually celebrated his birthdays with scrumptious steamboat dinners. The remaining soupbase after the dinner would be used together with whatever else that was still available like fish maw, quail eggs, Shiitake and button mushrooms, baby corns and carrots to make chai boey.

Apart from the leftovers, roast pig trotter, kiam chai (salted vegetables) are usually added to make the soup even tastier. Kua chai (Chinese mustard, gai choy) is a must have. The cooking of this dish is sometimes held back until the availability of this important ingredient. Asam jawa (tamarind) juice, pickled plums, dried chillies and pepper corns were added to the pot to enhance the flavour of the stew. It is spicy, sourish and very tasty at the same time.

Chai boey.

No two chai boey are the same. The recipe differs from one family to another. How they taste are very much dependent on the leftover food used. My favourite chai boey is usually during Cheng Beng (Tomb Sweeping Day) in April, Phor Tor (Hungry Ghosts Festival) during the Chinese seventh month and Koay Tang (Winter Solstice Festival) in December. There would be generous amount of roast pork, roast duck and best of all, jiu hu char. The stir-fried sengkuang (yam bean) made the soup extra delicious.

A few weeks back, Wuan gathered the main ingredients for chai boey. They included roast pig trotter, Chinese mustard, salted vegetables, pickled plums, tamarind, carrots, sengkuang, carrots, fresh red chillies, dried chillies, onions and Shiitake mushrooms, among others. Although it tasted nice, it did not have that chai boey character like those that I used to eat back in Penang. Chai boey without jiu hu char just does not taste the same. To illustrate the importance of jiu hu char, whenever Mum wanted to make chai boey in between festivals, she would cook jiu hu char a few days earlier for one of the meals. The leftover is then used for chai boey.

In the Klang Valley, this stew is called suen lat choi, sour and spicy vegetables in Cantonese, as the majority of the population speaks this Chinese dialect. It is also known as choi kiok which also means leftover food. The ingredients would be more or less like those that Wuan used. The cooking style is also the same although the leftover food may differ.

Ingredients for chai boey.

Basically, the recipe calls for the Chinese mustard (2 heads) to be thoroughly cleaned as a lot of soil is trapped between the leaves. It is then cut in quarters and kept aside. Water is added to 4 tablespoonful of tamarind pulp and the liquid sieved. This is poured into the pot together with 3 onions (quartered), 2 large carrots (cut into chunks), 1 medium size sengkuang (cut into large cubes), 2 portions of salted vegetables (cut into quarters), 4 pickled plums, 20 pepper corns (cracked with the side of chopping knife), a handful of dried chillies and 5 fresh red chillies cut lengthwise and the seeds removed. If the leftovers do not include Shiitake mushrooms, 10 can be soaked the night before, halved and added at the same time.

The leftovers are added together with roast chicken and duck parts, roast pig bones and roast pig trotter. The pig trotter should be chopped into large chunks. One can usually get the roast pork seller to do that. The pot is filled with water just sufficient to cover all the ingredients and brought to boil. The heat is then turned down to allow the stew to simmer for 1 hour. By then it should exude a mouthwatering aroma with a strong tangy aroma.

The Chinese mustard is added last to prevent it from being overcooked and becoming mushed. Water is added to cover the vegetable and allowed to simmer for another half hour until the Chinese mustard is thoroughly cooked and have soaked in the flavours of the stew. By then, the pig trotter should be very tender and the meat almost separating from the bones. If the soup is not sourish enough, tamarind juice or pickled plums can be added to taste. Chai boey can be served with rice or eaten as is.

Whether it is called chai boey or suen lat choi, I would be contented with just chai boey and rice for lunch and dinner on any given day. I would add a few ladles of the soup to my rice followed by generous portions of Chinese mustard, Shiitake and button mushrooms and roast pork. Those I would dip in soy sauce. No words can describe the pleasure as I slowly masticate the pork and the Chinese mustard and allow the flavours to titillate my olfactory senses. The chai boey is truly a piece of culinary heaven. No one can claim to have savoured the best tasting food in the world if they have not eaten this dish before.

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Japanese sweet potatoes and uncooked rice.

Sweet potato rice porridge is another easy-to-cook meal. It is light on the tummy. When I was a kid, Mum would cook this porridge for me if my body gets heaty. The symptoms of heatiness are ulcers in the mouth and a poor appetite. In a way, the rice porridge is therapeutic as the light meal allows for better digestion which in turn allows the body to recover faster.

According to Mum, rice was a scarce commodity during the World War II. If the family had sufficient supply, they would have cooked rice, if not, it would be rice porridge. They reared poultry and pigs for meat, and also grew their own vegetables. Sweet potatoes were one of them. It was a luxury to have sweet potatoes in the porridge during those times.

With the weather now alternating from hot to humid to rainy and back, I thought it would be a good idea to have some of this porridge. Wuan could not get local sweet potatoes at the Pandan Perdana wet market. She bought some Japanese sweet potatoes instead. They are just as good although the potato was not as sweet as I had expected. One good thing about Japanese sweet potatoes is that they do not have chewy fibres like those found in the local varieties.

Sweet potato porridge

Sweet Potato Rice Porridge Recipe

1 cup fragrant rice
1 sweet potato
a pinch of salt (optional)

5 cups water

Peel sweet potato and cut into chunks. Rinse rice 4 or 5 times until water runs clear. Put rice and sweet potato into the automatic rice cooker. Add water. Allow to cook for another 5 minutes after the porridge begins to bubble over. Turn off the cooker and let sit for another 15 minutes. Do not open the cover until ready to serve. To be sure that the potato is thoroughly cooked, gently poke a fork into it. If the fork goes all the way in, it is cooked. The porridge can be eaten as is. Sometimes, I add some light soy sauce for taste. Serves two.

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Braised dried oyster with black moss – Hou Si Fatt Choy.

When I wrote about eating my last festive cuisine in 2005, I really though I would never get the opportunity to savour hou si fatt choy again. That was five years ago. From then till now, I have diligently maintained a low-protein low-purine and low-salt diet. At the same time, I perform the clean intermittent catheterisation on schedule and take Detrusitol as prescribed. Those effort has paid off. The deterioration of my renal function has stabilised.

For this Chinese New Year, Wuan and I decided to cook this auspicious dish. Most of the restaurants that we patronised for our Chinese New Year meals did not have it in their menus. We used the recipe as a guide but did not adhere to the portions strictly. After all, to me, cooking is not an exact science. As long as we get the taste right, a little bit more of this and a little less of that would not make much difference.

Wuan bought eight extra-large dried oysters, black moss and shiitake mushrooms from one of the Chinese grocery shops in Petaling Street. During one of our weekend grocery shopping trips, we bought a small bottle of oyster sauce and a bottle of thick soya sauce. The day before we were to cook the dish, Wuan bought 300gms of roasted pork belly and half a head of Chinese cabbage from the wet market in Pandan Perdana.

This dish is actually very easy to prepare. The only ingredients that need cutting are the Chinese cabbage, garlic, shallots, ginger and removing the stem from the shiitake mushrooms. Wuan got the siu yuk seller to cut the roasted pork to size. We used only four of the extra large oysters and added four smaller ones that she usually used for soups. The dish turned out nicely.

The intense aroma from the mushrooms and dried oysters that wafted from the kitchen made me salivate long before the dish was ready to be served. The mushrooms were soft. So was the black moss. Overall, we liked it very much. I am looking forward to the next Chinese New Year already so that I can get to savour this dish again. Below is the recipe we used for this time with some variations from the previous one. We hope you will enjoy it as much as we did. Bon appetit.

Hou Si Fatt Choy (Braised Dried Oysters with Black Moss)

3 tbsp oyster sauce
1 tsp thick soy sauce
1/2 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp corn flour
a dash of sesame seed oil

Heat oil and saute garlic, shallots and ginger until fragrant. Add oyster and fry for another 1 minute. Add shitake mushrooms, roasted pork and sauces and stir fry for another minute. Add water from that the shiitake mushrooms and oysters were soaked in. Cover the kuali and let simmer for about 30 minutes. Check occasionally to ensure there is sufficient gravy. When the mushrooms becomes tender, add corn flour to thicken the gravy. Add the black moss and simmer for another 10 minutes before turning off heat. Serve with rice.

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