Grandma & Mee Siam Part Deux

On 6 Jan 2007, I spent the first Saturday of the New Year with my grandmother, learning how to cook her meesiam. I went with her to the wet market at 6.30am and spent that morning learning how to manoeuvre the trolley that she uses. One thing about shopping with your grandmother is that people will defer to her (and therefore to you too!). They'll be like "Aunty, you go first!" Wet market preferential treatment ;) Not bad at all!

My Meesiam Morning
We plunged right into the work after we came back from breakfast and worked non-stop from 8:30am - 11:30am. Making meesiam is a lot of work @_@


My first job is to peel shallots. I just spent a lot of time peeling this 1.5 packet of shallots ~_~ My grandma said that at the rate I'm going, I can only start cooking after lunch time T_T


What became of a nice plump white onion and the shallots I painstakingly peeled =) My grandma blended the shallots with balachan and this white-nut thingey she called baccarat, though I'm not sure what it is. She also blended a handful of dried shrimps.


She added the blended shallots and white onion into this pot of simmering broth. There is 1 packet of chilli paste, 2 packets of asam paste, 50c worth of lemongrass, 1 packet of rock sugar and other things I'm sure I've forgotten simmering in there. She used the dried shrimps and some chilli paste to fry the beehoon. No photos of those, though!


Hard boiled eggs. See, I get all the important roles. I peel the shallots and peel the eggs. Notice how half of the egg-white came off with the shell! My grandma shook her head and tutted when she saw the eggs =(


Another important task done by yours truly: Peeling the prawns. Yummy stuff, prawns :D These are fresh ocean prawns that were briefly boiled. Notice the succulent, plump flesh.


After a morning of peeling, deshelling, blending and boiling, the varied ingredients miraculously transformed into a steaming, glorious bowl of meesiam. Note: It's not dry meesiam, the soup is under the ingredients with the beehoon, as the bowl is rather deep. Doesn't it look fabulous??

It tasted great, of course (since I hardly interfered with the cooking process) =) My grandma didn't think that 1 session with her was enough for me to graduate though. She saw the day as a warm-up session, since she was still showing me most of the things (how to peel the prawn without tearing off half the tail, how to peel shallots in a more efficient manner, what are the names of the ingredients...) I wrote down the ingredients and the recipe, will post it up once I get a better idea of what are the english names of the vegetables and spices that she used! I will also need to have a go at it by myself, according to my grandma (she said that this time, she'll just sit and watch :P). I sound like a culinary dunce =(

All that aside, it was a lovely morning spent with her as we chatted about family members, laughed together and shared anecdotes =) It's been a long time since I could leisurely spend a whole morning with my grandmother... The time spent together is precious. She's happy that there's someone she can pass all her cooking skills to (albeit v.e.r.y. s.l.o.w.l.y....) and she's already thinking about teaching me her laksa, asam prawns and salted veg duck soup :D

I think that even if I don't really master the dishes, the most important thing is that at the end of the day, I'd have grown to know my grandma just a little bit better and that we've had some fun times together =)