"Kill a cow, start a fire,
the magic begins"
Anonymous
It was the second day of the Chinese New Year. In the middle of our busy and packed schedule of collecting red packets (actually not that many but still, business this year is much better than the last few years lol!), my aunt suggested that we go a barbecue gathering among our family members. That sound like a great idea and I quickly agreed to that plan. It was a very last minute idea, and we were without one of the most important equipment you need for BBQ - the stove.
However, there is no way it gonna stop us from carrying out our project. And hence, we brainstormed among us and came out with quite a brilliant idea - do-it-yourself BBQ stove, which can be easily assembled and disassembled afterwards.
First up, these are the secret ingredients I used to marinate my chickens.
As you can see from the photo above, they are from the top left, soy sauce, oyster sauce, rice wine, sesame oil, dark soy sauce, corn flour, chilly powder, shallots, garlic, ginger, salt and sugar. Now that I have revealed them here, unfortunately, it is no longer a secret anymore lol! But like they say, secrets are meant to be revealed.
Sorry, my story is starting to go off-the track a little bit already haha!
Work taking off on our DIY BBQ stove!
Next step was to fix the BBQ grill onto the bricks.
Subsequently, charcoal is randomly spread on the zinc and the hardest part - setting up the fire.
And while I was concentrating on putting up the fire, came one of my cousins to kacau daun.
Just to explain in brief how we created our BBQ pit, first we used a zinc sheet as its base, and bricks were arranged in both sides as the stands. Then we put a steel grill over the stands and tada, we were done! Good thing my aunt bought some fire starter to assist us in setting up the fire. That was our saviour, as it made our task much more efficient.
Then, came the trouble maker a.k.a. my lil cousin haha! Just like any other kids, he was so excited to see the first glimpse of smoke coming out from the charcoal. He insisted to do the fanning by himself. Whatever I had with me, he would grab it away from me. My cardboard fan, my wooden stick, all became snack-theft victim by him hahaha! The worst part is he took away my stick, ran a hundred feet away, threw the stick into the drain, looked at me and smile with that ohhh-i'm-sorry-too-bad-your-stick-is-inside-the-drain look =.=
Another team was at the kitchen - preparing some other side dishes for the evening.
My twin sisters preparing their so-called famous potato salad. But to be fair to them, it was really good.
Food are all ready on the table, yet the fire is still not available lol!
We used all sorts of stuff we could find from the house - from the cardboard, newspaper, paper fan, pot cover, and steamer steel divider,
which ended up getting bent quite badly lol!
And finally, we saw the first light of hopemagic haha!
And the news about our success in setting up the fire spread fast, that everyone in the house came out to witness it lol!
Grandma wasn't so impressed, as she continued skewing on her sausages to be grilled later.
Fried mee hoon topped with sliced omelets by second aunt. And the best thing is they made the all-time favourite thing - red chilly in soy sauce and lime juice.
Kids favourite.
One whole pot of home-made peanut sauce.
Guilinggao, a jelly-like Chinese dessert, traditionally made from the powdered plastron (bottom shell) from the turtle and a variety of herbal products.
The main menu of the night - marinated chicken ready to go on the grill.
It took us almost an hour before the fire was strong enough to start our BBQ. And we were telling each other why we are torturing ourselves by trying to cook on the fire like the stone-age people, when we can easily just turn on the gas stove at the kitchen. Quite stupid also right? Hahaha!
Just before we begin grilling our chicken, we had a short photography session. It was quite a historical day actually, because for the first time ever, all my cousins were gathered together at one place. Me being the youngest, all the way until the youngest one who is eight this year. There were too many of us that we had to line up in a straight line like you see in those perbarisan in scout.
Kids being kids, they cannot even stand still for three minutes and slowly but surely, the initial straight line started to bend more and more until it resemble an ular sawa at the end lol!
All eleven of us, just nice to make a football team. Our manager? Grandma-lar of course lol!
We were asked to make a few formations.
This one I don't know what formation it is. Wanna test our armpit smell I guess hahaha!
The best of all must be this one. Grandma and her five lovely daughters in an absolute ular-lar mood lol!
And hence, we started grilling our meat (pun not intended).
In Japan, we only do BBQ in summer. But in Malaysia, it doesn't matter; we can do it anytime of the year.
The marinated chicken grilled out nicely. But most importantly, they taste yummy!
At the end of the BBQ, we wrapped some sweet potatoes in aluminum foil and put them under the burning charcoal.
This boy was the sweet potato manager, making sure they don't get burnt.
At another corner, my uncle led some of the kids in doing something else.
Yup, you got it right. Firecrackers fun!
This brings back sweet childhood memories. Used to play these a lot in the past.
And while it was like a war zone for the kids playing firecrackers behind, Mom was still very cool,
sitting on her little bench and enjoying her BBQ chicken lol!
This is how everyone lose their calories after the BBQ session hahaha!
Leaving this engineer and doctor to repair the broken table at the kitchen.
Who would have thought that from a BBQ pit chef, we turned a carpenter at the end of the day hahaha!
