First, we visited our uncle (Mum’s eldest brother) and auntie. On this plate are pineapple jam tarts, yam cookies (the flower-shaped ones) and kuih bangkit (the white cookies). The pineapple jam tarts reminded me of my late grandma, as we used to help her make them when we were kids. I’m not so fond of the flavour of yam, but the kuih bangkit is always a favourite at Chinese New Year – it’s sweet and coconutty in flavour and literally melts in your mouth. When we were kids I remember eating kuih bangkit shaped like animals – I loved trying to identify all the different animals before the kuih bangkit were eaten up by everyone else.

These are kuih kapit, or love letters. They are also coconutty in flavour and ever so delicate. They can be very messy to eat though, because they are so delicate and crumbly.

My number one favourite out of all the Chinese New Year sweets is my auntie’s homemade kuih lapis, or layer cake (though, for many years now, my cousin has made the layer cake, rather than my auntie). My sister Juji and I like to peel the layers off and eat them one by one. Making layer cake is quite a labour-intensive process as you need to bake it layer by layer before pressing them all together to create that multilayered effect. I know I wouldn’t have the patience. Homemade layer cake always tastes so much better than those you can buy in a box from the Asian supermarket – I truly appreciate this once-a-year treat.

We then visited another uncle and auntie (Mum’s eldest sister). My auntie’s specialty is curry puffs. Inside the hand-rolled flaky pastry is homemade chicken curry. My cousin C fried these up fresh as soon as we arrived, and they were enticingly and finger-and-tongue-burningly hot. I could’ve polished off the whole plate. I didn’t, of course. This was the first round of curry puffs – there were a few rounds. :)

My little niece Ruby loved the curry puffs too. :)

It was an interesting and tasty assortment of goodies, starting with otak otak. Some were made the authentic way, wrapped in banana leaf parcels, but because my aunties didn’t have enough banana leaves to wrap all the otak otak, they used ramekins as well, lined with the banana leaves.

I have written about otak otak before, but for those of you who may have missed it, “otak otak” means “brains” in Malay. There are no brains in the dish though – the main ingredient is fish paste, flavoured with chilli, coconut milk, lemongrass and other delicious things.

I guess they call this “brains” because the steamed fish paste is sort of soft like mushed-up brains…? Something like that. :) Well, I enjoyed these “brains” very much.

We also had potato salad, with lots of hard-boiled egg in it, which I love in a potato salad. I think I like the hard-boiled egg in potato salad even more than I love bacon or ham in it. Yes, really!

We also tucked into beef and vegetable kebabs. The beef was tender, with a delicious charry flavour. I love vegetables cooked on skewers.

We enjoyed chunks of sausage, the same kind that we’d enjoyed at little Ruby’s first birthday party, served on a crisp curled lettuce leaf.

To wash it all down, there was jug of icy cold homemade lemonade.

Tangy, yet sweet, cold and refreshing – just what you want in a glass of lemonade.

We realised as we were eating that we’d had a back-to-front meal; we’d started with sweets and ended with savoury. :)