Champagne Wishes and Caviar Dreams

This weekend, Jeff and I decided to crack a bottle of Veuve and caviar for a dinner. It was soooo yummy. What's the occasion? No particular occasion. We don't need a special day to celebrate. We had been planning this for a long time and always saying that we gotta have that caviar and gotta have the champagne that's been sitting in the wine cooler since ... October 2006! :) We're not big drinkers and champagne is really for special occasions or special guests. But since we almost never have guests over, we just shared a bottle between us instead of having it go bad.

With our caviar, we had some smoked salmon, crackers, and a fruit and cheese plate. It was very rich and a little bit is enough. The caviar was really good - not salty at all and had a mild taste. It was quite good with a little bit of sour cream. I've had some cheaper caviar and usually it's quite salty that it masks slight flavour of caviar.

For Sam and Steph, I know you guys want to make mom's "four flavours" soup. Because you may not know all of the ingredients, I took the liberty of taking pics of the ingredients that you will need.

Start by taking out the ingredients in this first pic. A few of each is all you need. They are dried so they have a lot of flavour in them. Going clockwise, the white pieces are chinese yam (wai san). The thin yellow flake-like pieces are "yuk juk". The bottom right is lily petals (bak hup). The matchstick pieces are called "sah sum". Not sure what they are. :)

In addition to the above, you will need - in clockwise direction from top left - a handful of lotus seed, a handful of the white halved seeds called "see sut", and about 15 kernels of each type of almond kernels. Sam calls them the north and south almonds. I can't tell the difference between north and south. They all look the same to me. But you need both.

Soak all of the ingredients in water and then drain them in a colander. This will help get rid of any sand or grit. Often I will soak the dried goods in water for a few hours to soften them up. It will allow the flavours to come through faster when cooked.

- In a large pot, add a piece of lean pork, and two chicken legs (one might be enough, depending on the size of the legs).
- Add the dried ingredients to the pot. If you do soak the dried goods, don't drain the water when you add them to the pot. Just put it all in the pot.
- Using a regular rice bowl, add 6 bowls of water to the pot. This kind of insures you get 6 bowls of soup out of this.
- Bring the soup to a boil and then simmer for around 1.5 to 2 hours.
- Add salt to taste before serving.

Tell me what you think of the soup. If you like, I will probably post other soups that I like to make. :)

Toodles,
Pudgy