Deepavali feast

To all my Indian friends, Happy Deepavali!

Deepavali is also known as the "festival of lights". The lights or lamps signify the victory of good over evil in every human being. This year, Deepavali falls on Monday, 27 October 2008.

To celebrate Deepavali, I invited my family to our place for dinner today.

Da and I had intended to wake up early this morning and attend the 9 am church service so that I would have enough time to prepare for the dinner. However, we overslept and ended up attending the 11.30 am church service.

After church, we had a quick lunch at our favourite coffeeshop located at Jalan Tua Kong before we rushed home. By the time we got home, it was almost 4 pm.

I started by baking a chilli chicken casserole in the oven.

Yesterday, I had already prepared the chicken by marinating the chicken with Chilli Chicken - 65 spice (that you see in the photograph below), lemon juice, black vinegar, bay leaves, cinnamon stick, ground ginger, garam masala, curry leaves, star aniseed, cloves, chopped parsley, chopped garlic and chopped onion. As such, all I had to do was to take the marinated chicken out of the refrigerator and transfer the same to a baking pan before placing the pan in the oven.

While the chicken was baking in the oven, I prepared an otah and egg casserole. Recently, YK's mother went to Kukup in Malaysia and she gave us 2 pieces of frozen otah. Da and I had already eaten 1 of the pieces of otah for breakfast the other day. As such, I decided to use the remaining piece to make a casserole. (For the recipe, please refer to http://jesuslovespebbles.blogspot.com/2008/10/otah-and-egg-casserole.html). The difference is that today's casserole also contains egg tauhu.

(Hi YK - your mother asked for feedback on the otah that she bought. According to the label on the package, this otah is purportedly from Muar. I find that this otah tastes more "lemak" and is more nonya style than the otah that my family usually buys from Muar. It is perhaps due to the "lemak-ness" of the otah that gives it less "oomph" (in terms of smell and taste) than the Muar otah that I am used to.)

On 4 October 2008, Da and I bought some two types of curry powder from Little India - curry powder for fish and curry powder for meat (http://jesuslovespebbles.blogspot.com/2008/10/land-of-curry.html). I used the curry powder for meat to make a pork curry dish. In addition to the usual ingredients that accompany a curry dish (eg. potatoes, carrots, etc), I added bamboo shoots (something I learned from ET). In line with the Indian theme of the dinner, I added condiments such a cloves, cinnamon sticks, star aniseed, etc. To thicken the gravy, I used plain yoghurt instead of coconut milk.

Next up, my all-time favourite Indian dish - dhal. A big thank you to SCG (may he rest in peace), a copy of whose electronic mail dated 18 March 2003 (giving me tips on how to cook his famous dhal dish) I managed to locate yesterday after rummaging through the drawers. Thank heavens! When SCG was still alive, each time Da and I visited him in Perth, I would never tire of eating SCG's home-cooked dhal. He would always cook a large portion of the dhal and the leftovers would be re-heated the next day and eaten with hot steamed basmati rice. Here is a tip that SCG gave me when cooking dhal - add sambar powder to your dhal dish and it would taste very aromatic. This dish is does not contain any meat and is therefore suitable for vegetarians.

Oops! Speaking of rice, I forgot to take a photograph of the briyani rice that we cooked! Oh well, just imagine piping hot yellow briyani rice. Sedap!

For the stir-fried vegetables, I cooked a variation of SCG's cabbage and mustard seed dish. SCG used to fry green cabbage with mustard seed and tumeric powder. For me, I used 2 types of cabbage - the green cabbage (tip: Beijing cabbage is sweeter than those from Malaysia or Indonesia) and the purple coloured cabbage. I also added carrots, fresh mushrooms, canned mushrooms, capsicum and onions.

I had originally wanted to toast the papadum (GN toasts her uncooked papadum at 180 degrees celsius in the oven for a minute). I tried toasting the papadum today. However, even after 20 minutes, the toasted papadum did not look anything like the ones that GN toasted the other day for FIL's birthday party (http://jesuslovespebbles.blogspot.com/2008/10/happy-birthday-fil.html). In the end, I decided to fry the papadum.

Uncooked papadum is known as "appalam flour crackers" (like what you see in the photograph below). The fried version is known as "papadum".

After dinner, I made a pot of masala tea using tea dust, masala spice and condensed milk. I also served konnyaku jelly that I had made.