盆菜 Poon Choi (Casserole)

盆菜 Poon Choi (Casserole). The Poon Choi(Cantonese pronunciation) or Peng Cai (Mandarin pronunciation) is a large pot of vegetables. Poon/Peng means Pot, Choi/Cai means Vegetables. This dish originates from China from a dialect group Hakka. During old times, its actually just leftover food from the dinner the night before or many nights before. To make sure it doesn't go bad, its kept warm at low temperatures. But these days, most of the restaurant served with expensive ingredient like seafood, abalone, scallops, dried oysters, fatt choy, mushrooms, duck web, chicken meat, ham, cabbage and etc…There is no big secret in cooking this dish. The dish is made 'difficult' due to presentation. Every ingredient has to be layered and stack up. Anyway most of the ingredients are cooked separately, then arranged layers by layers, and when reheated, some of the sauce on the top layer will flow to the bottom, and the bottom layers will absorb the sauce, and you eat them layer by layers.

This is what I had during my father in-law’s birthday dinner at Prai......not bad...