Poon Choi (盆菜) Recipe

This dish makes the perfect centrepiece at a festive dinner table... Fun to eat!

Each year, my cousins and I take turns hosting Chinese New Year dinners here in Melbourne -- it's so much fun. Even though we've grown up with having so much amazing food prepared for us during this festive season, it's also fun now that we can cook these meals for ourselves here in Australia because our parents are overseas. Luckily for us, my Mum as well as my aunt and uncle actually flew in from Malaysia to celebrate it with us this year. Amazing!

Aside from our Christmas lunches, these Chinese New Year dinners are the most important meals for me every year. Each year, I try to learn and recreate a childhood favourite dish to share on this blog. I absolutely love learning these dishes that I've had growing up because of the amazing memories I've had with them. 

Some of these special CNY dishes I've made and shared include:

- Chinese 8 Treasure Duck (八宝鸭)

- Mum's Sour Plum Duck (酸梅鸭)

- Ham, Abalone & Kailan Jade Chicken (火腿鲍鱼玉兰鸡)

- Grandma's Chinese New Year Vegetarian Stew ("Jye")

Do click on the links above to check out the recipes. You can also check out other Chinese New Year dinners I've blogged about in the link: here

Poon Choi (盆菜), is a dish that has become increasingly popular in recent years around Malaysia and Singapore. It's definitely a celebratory dish that's made for special or festive occasions. Excitement ensues as soon as you place the dish in front of the table for everyone to gather around. It is almost overflowing with ingredients to signify abundance for the new year and made with lots of expensive, premium ingredients that you'd only eat on special occasions. It really is a treat for anyone to have. Made with lots of love, specially for the people you care about. I also like it for the fact that instead of preparing a big banquet with numerous dishes, I can just put all the effort into one dish and serve that instead. It's great.

Restaurants around Asia are starting to serve this dish too but we've never had them outside of home because they all charge RIDICULOUS amounts of money. It really is a lot of work to make so I understand why some people would have this at a restaurant. But my family's not like that at all. We have always preferred eating at home rather than eating out. Just like most things, it always tastes better and also a hell lot cheaper to make at home. Plus, it's more personal as you get to make it exactly how you and your family like to enjoy it. 

There really is no right or wrong way to prepare this dish because Poon Choi actually translates to "big bowl dish" or "big bowl cuisine". There's just as many variations to this dish as there are the number of people making it. It really is how your family enjoys it. If you look online, no 2 poon choi recipes would look identical or have the same ingredients. The presentation of this dish is just as important, if not more, than the taste of it. It is key that it is presented in the best way possible so that it has that "WOW" factor. 

Anyway, I was very happy to have made this dish because it turned out really well and we all enjoyed it. Definitely a great first attempt. It was a lot of effort but I wouldn't say it's more effort than preparing multiple separate dishes like I normally would as each element was actually quite easy to make. 

My family and I really enjoyed eating the Poon Choi and I hope you think of this dish for your next special occasion. Even though I've shared our version of it, I highly encourage you to put your own twist on it to make it your own too. It's fun! It really is such a treat to make and share with loved ones. Seeing the faces of everyone enjoying it really makes it all very, very worth it.

We also had some Nian Gao (年糕) or Sticky Rice Cakes as snacks before dinner

Of course, we couldn't have a Chinese New Year meal without "Lou Sang". A raw fish salad with abundance of colourful ingredients typically eaten on CNY

Perhaps I need to share a recipe for this dish too. Maybe next year!

Poon Choi (盆菜)

(an original recipe, feeds 12 - 15 people)

Click here to print the recipe

Ingredients:

For the braised pork:

1 pork trotter

2 slices of ginger

1/2 tsp salt

1 tbsp dark soy sauce

3 tbsp oil

1 cup dried shiitake mushrooms (soaked for 24 hours then sliced)

5 pieces dried oysters

1 inch piece rock sugar

2 spring onions (tied in a knot)

3 slices of ginger

1/2 bulb garlic

2 tbsp oyster sauce

1 tbsp dark soy sauce

1 tbsp light soy sauce
2 handfuls black moss fungus (soaked in water for 30 minutes)

For the seafood:

2 spring onions (tied in a knot)

3 slices of ginger

1 tsp Shao Xin wine

8 - 12 large tiger prawns 

8 - 12 large fresh scallops

For the chicken stock:

1 whole soup or boiling chicken 

5 slices of ginger

1/4 head large chinese cabbage (or 1/2 head if small)

1 large daikon or white radish

Liquid from canned abalone (see below)

Other:
1/2 roast duck *
1/2 soy sauce chicken *
200g crispy roast pork *
1 can abalone **
1 small head broccoli (chopped to florets)

* Just buy them from your favourite Chinese roast shops. Mine's Pacific House in Richmond

** Don't use fresh abalone (it doesn't have the flavour and texture we want). And get the ones with 8 - 9 smaller pieces (so that each person gets one) instead of the ones with 1 or 2 large pieces

Method:

For the braised pork:

1. Heat up a pot of water. Add the pig trotter and 2 slices of ginger and boil for 5 minutes. Drain and rinse the pork. Pat dry with a paper towel.

2. Rub the pork with the 1/2 tsp salt and 1 tbsp dark soy sauce. Heat up a large pan with the oil and sear on all sides until browned evenly. Remove the pork from the pan and place in a pressure cooker.

3. In the same pan, fry the shiitake mushrooms and dried oysters for about 2 minutes or until fragrant. Remove from mushrooms and oysters from pan and add to the pressure cooker.

4. Place all the remaining ingredients in the pressure cooker and fill the pressure cooker with water until it just covers the pork trotter. 

5. Seal the lid on the pressure cooker and cook on high for 35 minutes. Remove the lid. If the sauce is still a bit runny, set aside the pork and boil on high until sauce has thickened slightly. Stir in the black moss fungus.

6. Taste the sauce. Adjust the flavour if necessary with more sugar or soy sauce. 

For the seafood:

1. Fill a small pot with water and add the spring onions, ginger, Shao Xin wine and bring to a boil for 5 minutes.

2. While the pot of water is boiling, remove the veins and sandbag from the head of the prawns (but keeping the shell and head of the prawns).

3. Poach the prawns in the pot for 3 minutes or until just cooked. Remove and set aside.

4. Poach the scallops in the pot for 3 minutes or until just cooked. Remove and set aside. 

For the chicken stock:

1. Bring a large pot of water to the boil. Add in the chicken and ginger slices and simmer for 1 1/2 hours. While simmering, cut the cabbage to approx 1 inch squares. Peel the daikon and cut to 1 cm thick slices.

2. Discard the chicken and ginger slices. Add the white cabbage and daikon and simmer for another 30 minutes or until daikon is tender.

3. Stir in all the liquid from the canned abalone (used later) and turn off heat. No need to season with salt as stock will be flavourful enough once served with all other ingredients.

For the other ingredients:
1. Poach the abalone in the chicken stock for 1 minute. Remove from pot and set aside.

2. Poach the broccoli in the chicken stock until just tender (about 2 minutes). Remove from pot and set aside.


TO ASSEMBLE:

1. You will require a large dish or pot of minimum 30cm and several inches deep. Use whatever you can find. I used my hotpot or steamboat machine.

2. Place all chinese cabbage at the bottom of the pot, reserving a few tablespoons for decoration later.

3. Place all the daikon on top of the chinese cabbage, reserving a few pieces for decoration later.

4. Place the pork trotter in the middle of the pot. I used a few of the daikon pieces underneath to keep it upright. The pork serves as the centrepiece of the dish.

5. Next, carefully arrange all the remaining ingredients around the pork. You can do this in whichever sequence you like but I did the following (in clockwise from the top):

• Soy sauce chicken
• Daikon 
• Crispy roast pork
• Roast duck
• Scallops
• Prawns
• Abalone
• Chinese cabbage
• Mushrooms 
• Broccoli

6. Finally, arrange the black moss fungus in a ring around the pork trotter. Enjoy!!!