The name Chai Buey literally means 'leftovers', in many Malaysian Chinese household, this is one of the essential part of the any celebrations especially Chinese new year, after days of cooking and eating big (meat) meals for celebration, all we and our stomach want is probably just a simple easy to digest dish.
This dish is also a very clever way to use leftover meat dishes, the main ingredient used in this dish is Assam keping--"Garcinia Cambogia", a potent ingredient that gave the dish its distinctive sourish taste. Assam Keping/Garcinia Cambogia is also used to aid digestion and weight control in the west, you can find it in capsule forms too.
By the sound of it, you can already feel that this dish is not only delicious, it also gives our overworked digest system a much needed break during the weeks long of celebration.
Preparing it is also easy and laborless, it is just a matter of adding all the leftover meat dishes and vegetables into a big pot and simmer until everything is tender and flavor well blended. The Assam keping and dried chillies came in to give it a sourish and spicy kick. Since the leftover dishes added may be different every time every household, we can safely say that this dish could turn out slightly different every time it is made!
Which is another reason why it is so enticing!
