lioness in japan

This year’s reunion dinner in Tokyo was the best ever.

I was a little sad in 2007 and went back to the same dim sum restaurant in Roppongi Hills in 2008, so I thought I should shake things up for 2009. It’s strange that I’m not traditional (I mean, look at my work, living, and relationship situation — not very regular…) but Chinese New Year has a special place in my life.

My Singapore gal pal wasn’t heading back home either so I suggested we organise dinner with friends to a Chinese restaurant. But after tossing around ideas over shouchu, we thought cooking a meal for 10 would be fun.

Only eight turned up after all, but it was hard work all the same. Sit-down dinners are so tricky! We had a few accidents in the kitchen — a bleeding thumb and a melted strainer, but I am proud to report that it was a success.

I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.

I made 50 dumplings from scratch and was truly sweating it at 630pm, which was only half an hour before anyone was supposed to arrive. My friend whipped up a series of dishes — sweet and sour pork, ma po tofu, her mum’s chicken curry, mee slam and laksa. I also stir-fried some xiao bai cai from our garden and they were crunchy as usual. On top of these appetizers, we had two hot pots going for the dumplings and vegetables.

We prepared some entertainment as well.

No one was married but we wanted to give ang paos (red packets) anyway. How can you not have those red packets?! We stuffed them with lottery tickets and giggled over our fortunes. Those who didn’t like theirs could choose another fortune cookie and we ended up opening all of them just to read the slips of paper — they were in Japanese, by the way.

By the time this book came out, we were all roaring drunk and I tossed the mandarin oranges into big glasses of shouchu. I think our Japanese friends were the most tickled and one requested to borrow it for his holiday in South America.

Oh and the best part about being a co-chef was someone else did the dishes. We should so do this again in 2010.

Related posts:

1. Dinner at Singapore Seafood Republic in Tokyo
2. My 30th birthday: Dinner
3. Made my first Chinese dumplings

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