Half Hakka Version of Lui Cha Fan

At the end of each week, I always end up with a whole lot of vegetables in the crisper. This is because at the beginning of the week I buy different kinds of vegetables with the best intentions to have a balanced diet during the week. During the week, when I come back from work we always focus on cooking the main staples first being rice and a meat/fish dish that the vegetable dish gets forgotten in the process.

So what better way to use up all the vegetables in the crisper than to prepare this dish! This is a loose interpretation of lui cha fan (thunder tea rice), a Hakka dish which has a variety of individually prepared vegetable dishes accompanied by a pounded tea mixture, herbs and sesame seeds.

It is a time consuming dish which involves some effort. The time it takes to wash each type of vege, chop them up, prepare them individually, then prepare the pounded tea 'soup' which involves pounding tea leaves and herbs with a special wooden mortar and pestle cannot be underestimated.

For my half Hakka version of lui cha fan, I prepared:

snake bean omelette
winter gourd stir fried with dried shrimp
stir fried brocollini with garlic
chai poh
peanuts

Mix all the vegetables on a bed of rice. In place of the pounded tea leaves and herb soup, I used steeped tie guan yin tea.