“Chai Boey” is a colloquial Penang Hokkien word. “Chai” means “vegetable”, and “boey” means “the tail end” or “last”. It doesn’t make any sense if we try to translate the word literally into English. What it means is to use up the “leftovers” and traditionally for the Chinese “Hokkien” in Penang, “chai boey” is cooked using roast meats – such as, roast pork, roast chicken, roast duck – leftover from Chinese New Year, most importantly from the thanksgiving prayers to Jade Emporer, a supreme deity in the Taoist pantheon, on the 9th day of Chinese New Year, also known as the “Hokkien New Year Day”.

In Penang Hokkien, we call this most important day of year “tcheh kau” meaning “day 9”, “Hokkien lang seh jit” meaning “Hokkien people’s birthday” and also “pai ti kong” meaning “praying to the heavenly god”. This folklore of Penang Hokkien, whose ancestors originated from Fujian province in southeastern China believes their ancestors were saved by the Jade Emporer “heaven god” from genocide by ruthless enemies in ancient time by hiding in sugarcane plantations in their village. This is the most important and significant celebration for Penang Hokkien and is done on a grand scale at Weld Quay in front of “Chew Jetty” in Penang, Malaysia.

This is a family recipe passed down by my maternal grandmother to my mum and now to me. It is our family tradition to make this stew by making use of leftover roast meats after the 9th day of Chinese New Year.

The broth from the long hours of stewing the ingredients and roast meats is super tasty and yummy packed with flavours of saltiness, sourness and spiciness. Adjust the saltiness by adjusting the number of sour plums you add into the stew. The sourness can be adjusted based on the number of tamarind slices and the spiciness based on the number of dried chilies and bird eye chilies. The great thing about making your own “chai boey” is that you can control the flavours by adjusting the ingredients used to your taste.