Sheep Hot Pot and Noodles

I'm suffering from a lack of sleep since school started, been surviving on 4-5 hours of sleep every weekday, slightly longer on weekends. :( Not that I don't want to sleep, I still have work not done, so I would wake up again after my boys sleep, sign. However, I think age is catching up with me, I felt dizzy last night before bedtime, and it was so difficult keeping my eyes open today while driving. I ended up taking cat naps twice in the car while waiting for my boys to be dismissed. It's going to be busier next week as IT tournament is going to start, but I enjoy watching him and his teammates at their matches. I hope I can still find some time to make food art and update the blog.



For those of you who are not familiar with the Chinese Zodiac, this year is the year of the sheep. I actually do not have many sheep charabens or food art, if my memory does not fails me, I think my one and only sheep bento was Shaun the sheep, which I made a few years back. Click HERE for that post if you are interested, there are some of our Taiwan travel photos in there. :)


This time I made a radish sheep for our hot pot. Yes, the sheep is completely made from grated radish, I added on nori and pink cake decor gel for the details.


I added salmon, fishcakes, mushrooms, veggies and leeks for the hot pot. Soup base was just chicken stock.


I took a picture after boiling, the sheep looks like it's peeping out, lol.


I also made sheep noodles to dip in the hotpot. The noodles were already cooked.


If you are looking for food decoration ideas for Chinese New Year reunion dinner, you might want to try these two sheep creations.


I took step-by-step photos on how I made the sheep noodles. I hope it's useful. :)


First, twirl noodles around your fork into a ball and arrange them onto your plate. I had 3 balls of noodles on the top and bottom and 4 balls of noodles in the middle. I used chopped up spring onions to garnish around the noodles.


Using a pair of scissors, cut out the head, ears and legs from a slice of ham.


Use a craft punch to cut out ovals from nori for the nose. Using a pair of scissors, cut out 2 curved lines for the eyes, one straight line for the mouth and 4 small straight lines for the eye lashes. Use an oval cutter to cut out the cheeks from a darker coloured ham. I used chicken ham for the face and picnic ham for the cheeks.


Fold the edge of the ears and poke a pasta through it. This step is optional but it does makes the ears look nicer.


Assemble the ham onto the noodles, add on a small ball of noodles on the top of the head and it's completed. :)


I used my Philips Noodles Maker to make the noodles, I wanted to keep my noodles white, so I only used water and flour. :) You can use somen or udon if you are buying the noodles.

Where to get same or similar items used in today's post: