we had our RI celebration of 55 years dinner on a cool pleasant evening on 5.5.2013. 🙂 it was good fun, great company, enjoyable makan, and strawberries brought by Tiang Chye, and we had our 55th birthday cake courtesy of Choon Hung lit with 5+5 candles. 🙂 all 55ers were singing birthday songs for Chong Lee & Kum Heng, the 2 with the nearest birthdays, and later for ourselves..haha.. 🙂

I cooked a 21pax buffet dinner. I must say that this the best I have done, every dish turned up very nicely. 4 of my 5 dishes (& 2 of aunty Bes’ dishes) were precooked & ready to serve, and I only had to do the prawns (& aunty Bes the fish & kailan) when friends were already tucked in, so it was very relaxed and at the same time a really shiok, thrilled feeling! 🙂

Dinner was a  homecooked 9-course buffet + birthday cake courtesy of Choon Hung. 🙂

we started with a layout of 6 dishes. aunty Bes’s thai tanhoon salad was a great appetizer – spicy, tangy, tasty.

the pan-roasted brined chicken breast was moist, tender & sweet-This is a great tapas dish I always do for sit-down dinners. 🙂

teochew braised duck

I was especially proud of my teochew braised duck today. Chong Lee liked this especially. the flavour was superb & the colour & looks were great! the cutting was also good w/o torn edges,pieces etc. 🙂 the lor neng was just putting to good use the braised duck sauce & was quite a homely addition.

I also did chashu, which is a Japanese style slow oven-cooked belly pork. This is commonly used in ramen (for chashumen) where the meat is rolled up & cut into thin circular pieces. 🙂 It was much better than the kakuni I did previously (which was also a good Japanese styled slow-braised belly pork), both the texture/bite & the taste. 🙂

nonya curry chicken

this was a good day for me. my curry chicken were usually quite ok, and today’s curry chicken was truly my best, really tasted like Zion Road nasi padang green curry, sweet, fragrant & lemak. 🙂

next up – aunty Bes’ spicy bean sauce prime ribs, always good! 🙂

I cooked my usual dry wok high heat garlic prawns at this point. Wee Woon liked this especially. 🙂

aunty Bes then brought out her very good spicy tau jeon seabass – quite remarkable that it turned seabass which had mud taste & mushy not great texture to a very different tasty dish.:-)

forgot to take photo of Choon Hung’s very nice chocolate cheese cake, and also aunty Bes’ blanched HK kailan with shitake mushrooms in oyster sauce. 🙂

everyone had a really, really great fun time together. 🙂

c.h.e.f andy