Chinese New Year's Eve dinner

Today is Chinese New Year Eve!! :)

So as the most important family dinner of this festival takes place today, I invited 2 dear and really close friends, Mr and Mrs kinggoose to join us in our CNY dinner ritual.

We had steamboat or chinese fondue as it is known and kinggoose has taken some photos which I hope to swipe of him later and post here. :)

I made/prepare for the steamboat:

A good chicken and pork rib stock flavoured with lime leaves

Beef marinated with ground pepper, salt, garlic and coriander (and cornflour)
Chicken marinated with ginger, spring onions, soya sauce and rice wine (")
pork marinated with lemongrass, ginger, soya sauce and black pepper
Thin slices of fresh salmon
home made chinese fish balls and fish cakes

Lots of veg including chinese cabbage, romaine lettuce, chinese mushrooms, white mushrooms, carrots and I cut the sweet potatoes slices with a crab and a dog shaped vegetable cutters which look so cute and cool.

Sweet potato noodles and eggs to finish off the excellent broth at the end.

I got some individual steamboat lil' nets which are really fun as each of us put together what we want in our steamboat and lower the nets in the boiling broth and fish out veggie later with it. :)

To finish of the meal, we had summer fruit crumble which we bought with Ben and Jerry's ice cream.

Lots of chinese tea and also very yummy strawberry sparkling wine.

A good start to the Year of the Dog I say!

Nite nite all!. No doubt u will hear more of CNY on my lj since we have 15 days of it! ;)