Since Mum and Dad were away at Christmas and we didn’t have a roast turkey, Mum decided to roast a turkey for Chinese New Year. She managed to buy a turkey for quite cheap (post-Christmas prices!) and cooked it Macau-style, using a recipe from Aunt T and Aunt T’s sister who lives in Macau (Mum and Dad stayed with Auntie T and Uncle S while they were on their holiday in Malaysia). The turkey looks very dry and overcooked in this picture, but amazingly, it was moist and tender inside. The stuffing you can sort of see there consisted mainly of pork.

Mum carved the turkey using her electric carving knife, and then put chunks of the porky stuffing all around and over it. Here is the carved turkey without the stuffing:

And here is the turkey, with stuffing all over and around. Mum cut up the stuffing into chunks. It was very savoury and delicious, like a sort of meatloaf (trust us to make a meat dish even meatier!).

We also had roast pork and roast duck, kindly brought supplied by my eldest sister CW and her hubby.

The turkey had been wrapped in bacon as it roasted in the oven, and then the bacon was removed for the last part of the cooking time. The bacon was served up in its own dish.

We also had steamed fish. Here it is, garnished with ginger and mushrooms. If you look carefully you can see the fish head at the top of the dish/picture (see its teeth?).

And here is the fish topped off with fresh coriander. I can’t stand fresh coriander, but since I can pick it off it’s not a problem. Steamed fish on the bone is a real treat for me as Jac only likes eating fileted fish and I can never be bothered cooking it at home for myself.

Yes, and with all that meat, we did have vegetables. First, we had a lovely colourful salad:

Juji made a delicious potato salad, with hard-boiled eggs, bacon (some of the bacon that was cooked with the turkey) and sweet gherkin pickles.

My grandma made the chap chye, a must for a CNY family reunion dinner. Jac refers to this (with fondness) as “the fungus dish”. I just love all the different textures in the dish. Sharp-eyed people may notice that there are small pieces of pork in this dish too.

My plate.

For dessert, we had apple cake, served warm from the oven topped with meringue. I think the cake was courtesy of my sister-in-law.

It was really good – sweet, soft and moist, with the lovely flavour of cinnamon and pieces of apple on the bottom. I love the smell of warm cinnamon – that to me is a quintessential baking smell. We ate the cake with vanilla ice cream. There was definitely no meat in the dessert! Hahahahahaa.