New Years' Da Been Lo

I may have mentioned somewhere that it's somewhat of a family tradition to have da been lo for new years' eve. This year was no exception. As you likely know, preparation for da been lo is a lot of slicing and plate layout so everything looks nice on the table. Normally, I kind of skimp on the plate layout part of it since it's just the two of us, but I figured, what the hell.

We pretty much like the serve the same stuff every time we have this with only a few minor changes as time passes. Here we have one plate just for beef (flank steak) as well as the seafood plate with shrimp, scallops, and cod. In the back on the left, you'll see our cod overflow plate. We have so much of it because it's actually my favorite. It cooks up light and flaky. Actually, just thinking about it right now makes me want some. Yum.

The scallops look a little out of control. Normally I have serious issues getting the timing right on scallops because I'm so paranoid about overcooking them. This time, I sliced them in half horizontally to help deal with it. Sadly, I was still undercooking my scallops. I vow to one day get this right.

The pot starts off with boiling water. You pretty much want the water to simmer the entire time to maximize the cooking speed of your food. When I'm almost done plating, we toss in slices of taro root. They are very yummy. Here we also have bok choy, shrimp balls (you may be surprised at how tasty these are. We prefer shrimp balls to fish balls which are a grey, rather dirty-looking ball.), and tofu. After cooking, we'll ad vermicelli noodles (fun see) and eat those in the leftover sauce and after that, drink the soup.

Here's a typical plate setup for us. The bowl on the left is the eating bowl with the eating chopsticks. My typical sauce is soy sauce, sesame oil, my dad's pepper sauce, and a raw egg. Very yum. The smaller plate on the right has the cooking chopsticks (for touching raw meat and putting into the communal pot) and also the mesh strainer that you put the food in to cook. We used to have four of these but we appear to have lost one along the way. I'm not really sure how this happens, so I'm sure it's stuck back behind a drawer or something.

Anyhow, you will see how much I like to fill my plate up before eating. I like to keep the food coming. =)

We also made a batch of dumplings on new years for the freezer. Nothing says happy like a freezer full of homemade dumplings.