Easy Peasy Hakka Lei Cha

ok so this might gross some of you out due to the crazy amounts of veggies involve, if you have no likings towards le greens you've been warn. don't tell that i haven't told you so :)

disclaimer: i'm not a vegetarian nor a vegan but i do have a huge fondness for veggie. i do take meat occasionally.

Hakka Lei Cha. Basically if i break down the words and translate it to English it means mixed tea rice, of the Hakka people. I'm not Hakka but I've grown to love this dish to try and learn how to make it. :)

Basically it consist of a bowl of rice with various toppings of different veggies, to your liking, and a bowl of green soup *which smells and taste might put of some people, like most of my friends*

there's no ground rules to make the toppings, as you can see from the picture it's just chopped veggies mixed with some tofu. the auntie who thought me how to make this dish told me, "you just have to make sure the veggies are diced to bite size and your done!" mix in tofu, or just anything you like, really, i think the only reason meat is not included because they wanted it to be healthy and well, kept vegetarian.

so the key ingredients i would list down here is to make the green soup. it's actually like how you make pesto paste, and add warm water to the paste to make it soup.

ingredients for the soup:

a handful of thai basil (a bunch)

ground peanuts (normal peanuts, bake it and remove the reddish skin)

a dash of salt (to your liking)

a spoonful of green tea powder (or chinese tea leaves, yeah, the black dried ones)

sorry for the vague measurements of the usage of ingredients because this dish is really that sort of up-to-your-liking kind of food. and for the tea leaves, i would recommend using green tea powder instead of the chinese tea leaves because i find them to leave a bitter aftertaste in your mouth after drinking the soup... green tea taste much better)

mix all the ingredients in a blender and blend away, adding just little amounts of water to keep it's texture paste-ty.

usually what i observed in stalls selling lei cha is they would refrigerate the paste and use it when they want it, but keep in mind that no preservatives are added so i guess it would probably last a week before you need to make a new batch. 

and voila! you're done! anyway, i would just included a list of veggies tat you can use as your toppings (remember to diced them into little pieces):

1. french beans

2. cabbage

3. pucuk manis (sweet leaves bush) 

4. bak choy

5. tofu

6. celery

7. peanuts (yes, with the skin removed) *if you're allergic to this you can skip this as well, no biggie*

8. dried prawns (chopped and lightly fried with oil, this is an option for a more flavorful bowl of lei cha toppings but if you're a vegan you can omit this)

9. any sort of veggie that you can think of, preferably in the color green

good luck! 

anyway, since today is the mid autumn festival, Happy Mid Autumn everyone! The moon is really pretty today have fun sipping tea, eating mooncakes and playing lanterns! :)

i love the decorations at mid valley the most. they used fresh flowers!!  it's like some garden exploded in there. so pretty and the whole place smells so nice *dreams*