Poon Choi / Big Bowl Feast @ East Ocean Restaurant, Menglembu

I know Piggy Jo is waiting to read this post. I was telling her about this Poon Choi aka Big Bowl Feast.  She was fascinated by my description of the amount of delicious seafood in it. Bet she was drooling when I told her about this dish over skype LOL!   Have been wanting to share this with my readers too but was just too busy with the other stuff and have forgotten about this dish I ate some months back and looking forward for another round...next time, we will try the most expensive range :P  I am sure my friend Claire will enjoy this again as much as I do :)  Read on for more info on this dish...............

Poon Choi  aka as Big Bowl Feast is a traditional type of dish originating from Hong Kong village cuisine but now is famous in urban area of HK and it has become a signature dish in most Chinese restaurants in Malaysia.  It is a dish made up of ingredients such as roast pork, beef, lamb, chicken, duck, abalone, ginseng, shark fin, fish maw, shrimps, crabh, dried mushroom, fishballs, squid, dried eel, dried shrimp, pigskin, beancurd and chinese radish and are served in wooden, porcelain and metal basins.  Traditional village Poon Choi is served in large metal washing bowls with a perforated metal plate at the bottom at the bottom ti keep the food from burning as it is kept warm on a portable stove as it is being served to diners. Poon Choi is special in that it is composed of many layers of different ingredients.  Every restaurant has their own composition - differs with the price of course :p  It is also eaten layer by layer instead of " stirring everything up "

Story on how this dish  came about - taken from Wikipedia

It was said that Poon Choi was invented during the late Song Dynasty. When the Mongol troops invaded Song China, the young  Emperor fled to the area around Guangdong Province and Hong Kong. To serve the Emperor as well as his army, the locals collected all their best food available ,cooked it, and because there were not enough containers, put the resulting dishes in wooden washbasins. In this way, Poon Choi was invented.

The Poon Choi we had here consists of fresh shrimps, fresh scallops, fish maw, sea cucumber, fresh mushrooms, dried shiitake mushrooms, beancurd and dried oysters and a bottom layer of napa cabbage.  All stacked in layers and covered with thick well flavored sauce.  This is a sinfully delectable dish rich in protein and iodine and artery clogging stuff and not advisable to be taken often :p  but I do crave for it again as I was blogging on this dish.....slurp slurp slurping away virtually LOL!   This dish costs RM195, the cheapest of the range we go for the cheapest one first - wallet problem  and the most expensive one is RM500.  We will go for the RM500 one when the wallet is full  :p   For the time being enjoy peeking into the layers of food that was inside the basin.....unfortunately half way through the meal, the layers of food were mixed up together.  Don't worry about hygiene, we have a few shared ladles for scooping the food into our individual bowls :))

Have a wonderful weekend !

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