Granddad's Bak Kwa

At his office Christmas party last year, Son No 1 won a $10,000 travel voucher in the office raffle.

A few days ago, he and his family took advantage of this good fortune and left for Hong Kong Disneyland and also to celebrate his 40th birthday there before going to Singapore to visit relatives.

Son No 2 and wife also went along to join them and Grandma C and myself were left behind looking after their two dogs.

So Grandma C decided to have a bon voyage dinner before they all left, and I decided to make my bak kwa for the grand children, something they love.

I made a special trip to the Asian butcher, who is rather far away, to get the fatty minced pork (1.6 kg @ $8.50/kg), and, once home, mixed it up with the marinating ingredients using Grandma's cake mixer.

Then it is left overnight in the fridge and, after that, the rolling out process begins.

The next stage is to get them all on trays and into the oven at minimum heat to dry up.

There are some variations in methods here: some internet recipes suggest baking them to completion in the oven, while others suggest merely drying them and then barbecuing them.

I favour the second method, though one day I'll try omitting the drying stage and just barbecue them.

Above, dried and out of the oven, and cut up with a pizza cutter.

Barbecuing them just before the grand children arrive.

The small plate holds the qc rejects: one was burnt and the other I dropped on the floor.  They will be for the dogs.

If you're interested, the recipe I eventually used after looking at a few on the internet is here.  I did make a few variations which some other recipes use, eg, adding 5 spice powder and substituting the wine with Chinese rose wine.