Nonya Ngo Hiang

Today was a sweating day. It has become a CNY tradition that mom makes her special Nonya-style Ngo Hiang. She said she follows Violet Oon's recipe. I helped her in doing everything else other than the main crucial part of wrapping the Ngo Hiang!

The ingredients used were : minced pork, fish meat, shelled prawns, carrots, water chestnuts, chives, onions, eggs, flour, pepper, salt, sesame oil and ngo hiang special spice. The most tedious was probably peeling those water chestnuts and carrots and chopping them into teeny weeny pieces. At that moment I wished I could find ready made peeled AND chopped water chestnuts and carrots! It was so time consuming. Mom prepared the meat, fish, prawns. (Note: Mom substituted crab meat for fish meat, Violet Oon's version is with crab meat).

Then the mixing part began. We threw in all of the ingredients and mixed them, adding flour, eggs, spice powder, pepper and sesame oil. They turned into a beautiful colourful pot of ngo hiang mix. Hence it was time to wrap. Mom cut up the salted beancurd skin into square pieces to wrap the meat prawn rolls. Mom happily sat and wrapped her Ngo Hiang (she insisted no one could wrap the ngo hiang as perfectly as her *roll eyes*). I had to do everything else then.... steaming the rolls in a steampot, washing the plates and pots, cooling the rolls. Each tray of 3-4 rolls were steamed for 10-15 minutes at one time (because mom said cannot have 2 tray/layers as the upper tray's rolls would not be as cooked as the bottom tray *roll eyes*). Hence I spent about 2-3 hours just steaming 38 ngo hiang rolls, that I almost lost steam!

However, luckily and thankfully, today's Ngo Hiang turned out very nice, as mom remembered to add in the spice powder this time. Normally we would add more water chestnuts so that the ngo hiang would be crunchy. Usually on CNY day, mom would fry the frozen ngo hiang and serve guests as a dish.