Ruby’s Full Moon Celebration

Also known as: Death by Curry.

Last Sunday (21/10), my family held a “full moon” celebration for the newest member of the family, my brother and his wife Ange’s first child, my first ever niece Ruby. The full moon celebration is usually held when a baby is around a month old – in this case, she was around 6 weeks old. The celebration featured the traditional Chinese-Malaysian full moon foods: nasi kunyit (tumeric rice) and chicken curry, hard-boiled eggs with their shells dyed red, served with pickled ginger, and ang koo kuih (literally “red turtle cake” – don’t worry, no turtles were harmed in their making!). My sisters CW and Juji and I rocked up at around 9 on Sunday morning to help Mum get everything ready. Mum and Juji had already done a lot of the cooking – Mum had pre-cooked the curry chicken and the curry potatoes separately – explanation for this coming up shortly, and Juji had made kuih bulu (little steamed cakes, not sure of their English name) and hard-boiled and dyed around 60 eggs. Two sessions were planned – one at 10am to 12noon, the other at 12:30pm to 2:30pm – just to make the number of guests a little more manageable. My sisters and I took on kitchen/serving duties, and I was official photographer for the day. Family can log into flickr and all photos (people as well as food) here. I took around 400 photos, mostly of people, and the best of them (225!) are included in the set.

The dish of red eggs looked rather spectacular, I thought. In the centre is the pickled ginger. The egg is a symbol of new life, and in Chinese culture the colour red is associated with good luck.

Red eggs with pickled ginger

Mum had cooked two lots of chicken curry during the week and had frozen them. Here’s one batch of chicken curry being thawed out in the wok on the barbie. As you can see, the curry is in the shape of the ice cream container it was frozen in. :)

Thawing out the frozen curry

Here are cooked curry potatoes. Chicken curry freezes very well, but potatoes tend to go soggy, which is why the chicken curry is frozen minus the potatoes.

Curry potatoes

Here are the potatoes being heated in the curry sauce…

Curry potatoes heating up

… the chicken curry before the potatoes were added…

Curry chicken

… and the curry chicken and potatoes combined. The smell was heavenly.

Curry chicken and potatoes combined

This may have been Jay’s plate of chicken curry and nasi kunyit.

Nasi kunyit and curry chicken

Juji had also made a simple pasta bake, for guests who weren’t so keen on curry and rice. Of course, some of us had curry and rice and pasta bake!

Pasta bake

My first plate of curry and rice. The sliced champignon you see there is from the pasta bake, not the curry! Heh.

My plate - nasi kunyit and chicken curry

Ooops, almost forgot the egg!

My plate - nasi kunyit and curry chicken with red egg

Juji had boiled the eggs so the yolks weren’t runny or crumbly – they were soft and gooey. With a little freshly cracked black pepper – delicious!

My plate - nasi kunyit and curry chicken with red egg peeled

The first session was for friends, the second was for family. My aunties (Mum’s sisters) arrived for the second session with more curry!

Curry collection

Chicken curry.

Chicken curry  1

More chicken curry.

Chicken curry 2

Yet another chicken curry.

Chicken curry 3

And yes, even more chicken curry.

Curry chicken 4

My aunt S happily proclaimed it “death by curry”, and helped herself to more. :)

Death by curry

My brother’s mum-in-law, Ruby’s other grandma rocked up with a platter of sausage rolls and mini quiches, warm from the oven.

Sausage rolls and quiches

Quiche innards

Juji had also made kuih bulu. She used my late grandma’s recipe – they turned out lovely. She warmed them in the steamer before serving.

Kuih bulu

CW made a lemon curd cake using a Delia Smith recipe. The tangy lemon was lovely.

Lemon curd cake

Slice of lemon curd cake

Lemon curd cake sliced

Mum’s friend from work (we call him Uncle M) and his wife K arrived with a surprise – a beautiful homemade iced butter cake (K made my Mum’s 60th birthday cake last year –see photo here). As you can see, little Ruby has a few names – Ruby, as in the gemstone; Deirdre, the name of a beautiful heroine in Celtic legend (her mum, my sister-in-law, is Irish-Australian); and her Chinese name Yee-Ping, which means “harmonious peace

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