Alright, first question first. Who is old enough to remember this dish? It is normally served during a 10 course wedding or birthday dinner when I was very much younger. Second question is who has recently ate this dish?

I, for one have not eaten it for a long, long time nor have I seen people cooking it. I only remembered this dish because I bought some mustard vegetables to make Kiam Chai Buey the other day but found that I did not have much bones and stuff saved. This meant I have not been eating duck for a long time. kekekekekek I have to rectify that soon. So I have to rack my brain on what to do with the mustard vegetable and this dish of yesteryear popped back into the old grey cells suddenly.

Another reason I decided to cook this is because my hubby do not eat crabs, or so he insisted. I like to have a challenge and I like to think I am the winner today. He lapped up every bit of the sauce. I mean he is just a hair’s breadth short of sucking it up with a straw! It’s like when he said he don’t eat pork belly or prawns then I will mince pork belly with prawns to make crispy beancurd wraps or fried wanton and he would not be able to stop eating. All’s fair in LOVE and WAR in my book – kekekekekekeke

Today I cooked with more sauce because of the hubby, he likes a lot of sauce with his rice. I also made my garlic and crispy shallot rice to go with this dish because I cooked only one dish. I can’t cook another dish or there will be leftovers. Sigh…..now especially in the past year as age has creeped up on us, we are finding it hard to sleep if we have a big dinner. Ah….I missed them days when I can hantam a bowl of Belacan BiHoon, a plate of mee goreng, ice kacang and a tall glass of coke and probably a plate of rojak as well. Nowadays we have to do what I call ‘pace-eating’!

Note – I remembered in the olden days when this dish is served we were given a small container of Chinese black sweet vinegar but today I chose to use Apple Cider Vinegar as I try to find ways to get my family to take this.

Hope you try and enjoy this dish.

This is a dish that grows on me. That is to say the older I get the more I appreciate this dish. However I am fussy and I like it only if it’s cook ‘fresh’ and not like my ex mother in law. I have not been happy with my chai buey for the past year because I could not find and buy any asam keping (tamarind slices) for a year. I was told it is because people nowadays like to use tamarind juice in container. Tamarind juice is just not right for Chai Buey. Therefore I am thankful and grateful to good friend for buying me asam keping from my hometown, Menglembu and so I decided to cook this dish today.

Chai Buey in the Hokkien dialect literally means ‘leftovers vegetables’ My ex mother in law was from Szechuan. She was one of those boat people that escaped China on a big sailing junk with 2 young children in tow to join her husband in Malaysia. She did told me before that she was not going to give her husband any excuse of looking for a second wife in Malaysia She went on to have 4 more children. Truly a matriarch!

She washed laundry for a living and saved every cent she earned. When she passed she owned her own double storey corner shop lot +++ I really respect and admire her. Frugal and hard working all her life. Spicy Kiam Chai buey is one of her famous dish served weekly. We employed a lot of ladies to clean birds nests as the family was in Chinese medicine like ginseng, birds nests etc. We feed all the workers with lunch. At the end of each day leftover food that’s worth keeping will be kept in the fridge, usually protein. At the end of each week MIL would boil her ‘master stock’ for the spicy kiam chai buey, then sieve out all the bones before adding the asam keping, chillies, protein, mustard greens and others in. The then spicy kiam chai buey I never dare to eat and on that one day a week I frequent Ipoh Tuck Kee Restaurant for their ribs – memories ……..

I learned from this amazing Szechuan matriarch, that to make a good spicy kiam chai buey there are things we could not do without like dried & fresh chillies, the asam keping (tamarind pieces), tomatoes, pickled mustard and fresh mustard greens.