Pengat

It's the 14th day of CNY. Tomorrow is the last day of CNY celebration. Of course it is not the last day of the new year but just the last day of celebrations (okay, okay. Dad will disagree with this since he thinks that there should be something to celebrate for everyday). But tomorrow is officially the last day of CNY celebration. It is known as "Chap Goh Meh", which literally means the 15th night. On the night of the 14th day, everyone in the family usually get together for a last reunion before everyone goes back to their own life for the rest of the year.

As usual, all these traditions and gatherings are meaningless when you're miles and miles away from home without any family members close by. However, sometimes when someone makes the effort to bring friends together, it turns out to be a pretty good time. It makes you miss home even more but you have fun and realize that there are actually people around you who feels the same.

While mum, dad, ahdik, ahmah and everyone else back home are having a great seafood dinner at home, Ping joined the chinese M'sians. On "Chap Goh Meh", the Hokkiens usually eat pengat. What is the significance? Err...dunno leh. Mummy say eat pengat..so we eat pengat lor. So Ping went out hunting for the ingredients required for pengat this morning. Went to Meijer to get the orange sweet potato and bananas, and was hoping they have purple yam but could not find any. So went to Oriental Mart to get yellow sweet potato, and coconut cream. Looked around for purple yam but could only find the frozen ones. So weird. Frozen yam??? That's the first time Ping saw it but bought it to try it out anyway.
Ping got the recipe from mum but it is the same one as in the "Nonya Flavours" recipe book (just realized that they have a different spelling for "Nonya" vs. the more common "Nyonya"). Some recipes call for black-eye beans but that is more like bubur cha-cha style.

100g yellow sweet potato (甘薯)
100g orange sweet potato
100g purple sweet potato
200g taro (yam)

1L coconut milk (from 1 coconut)
100g sugar or to taste
2 pandan leaves

3 bananas (preferably Pisang Raja)

1. Peel and cut sweet potato and taro into small diamond shapes. Steam, separately, until cooked.
2. Bring coconut milk, sugar and pandan leaves to a simmer, stirring until sugar dissolves.
3. Put the steamed sweet potato and taro into the coconut sauce. Add the banana slices which are cut just before cooking to prevent discoloration. Stir to mix.

Since Ping read online that purple sweet potato is rare to come by in the States, Ping skipped that and looked for purple yam instead. Even then, Ping could only find the frozen one. Ping defrozed it and steam it but the outer part became 'lembik'. So there was less purple yam in Ping's pengat because Ping had to remove some of the soft part (too geli to put in lah, although technically it is still edible). Ping also had to skip the pandan leaves since there's no pandan leaves here. There's pandan extract but the last time Ping tried it with the pulut tai-tai, it wasn't very strong in taste and fragrance. And of course, Ping just got regular bananas since there's no Pisang Raja here. But the bananas here are sooooo huge that it looks like pisang Raja anyway. As for the coconut milk, of course have to use can one lah. No 'ah ne ne' to sell us any 'ia cheung'.

So here's the final product....
Not sure if it is ho chiak or not but it was good enough for Ping who hasn't had it since Ayer Itam ahmah cooked it two years ago (summer of 2005). And Ping brought back an almost empty pot so it must be at least edible that people are eating it. *grins*