Cookout Session 1

What's a better way to spend your long holidays with good food and good company eh? I realised that I've been cooking too much recently and true enough, Emily had invited me over to her place on Saturday afternoon for a cookout session with her other friends. I brought Yiling along - the more the merrier (she looked bored at home, or I'm bored looking at her facing the computer 24/7).

Okay, my idea of a cookout session is where a group of people trying out some recipes maybe like 1 or 2 recipes together and oh boy I was so wrong..so so wrong. When we arrived, her friends had started preparing the ingredients and working on the recipes. They were 7 people there including Yiling and me and all of them have their own recipe to work on! Right after a brief introduction of ourselves, we started to help by chopping and slicing.

Me & Emily

Later, we were each assigned to a recipe which the host had chosen and had bought all the ingredients earlier that day at Cold Storage in Bangsar Shopping Centre. Apparently, the ingredients that we needed for our cookout session was not available at just any supermarkets because most of the ingredients are expensive and imported. Fresh herbs especially are difficult to find. And since the recipes are all taken mostly from The Women's Weekly Australia, so can you imagine the complexity of the cooking?!!

The Master Chefs

A total of 1 soup, 4 mains and 3 desserts had been prepared for the night. It looked like we were cooking for a village's Xmas dinner. Even desserts were of 3 different variants!!!

The wine didn't taste good - well at least not up to my expectation. The nose was no good and it didn't had a good finish too sorry to tell. Told you, I had a very expensive-trained-palate and wines like this will never entice me. It was Australian by the way and I gave up on drinking Australian ever since I drank French. French wines are like French men, so cultured, good to look at and smelled good too (they popularise eau de parfum don't they?). A chef like me likes to have her alcohol around when she cooks. Didn't they always do in those TV cooking shows in the west?!!

Emily really wanted to have the Chocolate Orange Polenta Cake and I have to do it since she kept telling people that I'm good in baking. Well, depends on the level of baking. Mine is always baking cupcakes and pineapple tarts. When it comes to baking such a complicated cake with more than 15 different ingredients, I shuddered.

Lucky the cake turned out well, only the lower crust was a bit overcooked due to temperature control failure. The cake was moist but I think it's a little bit too sweet even after I had cut down 20-30gm of sugar. I think I can bake! Yay....

The drink that was made by SC was great. I never liked ginger - never ever but even though this drink has got ginger, mint leaves and lemon, I liked it! And since he doesn't have a name for it, I called it the non-alcoholic Mojito. It would be perfect if I could just add some Vodka in it - marvelous (saliva dripping - *switches to alcoholic mood*).

Roast Lamb, Nam Yue Fried Chicken, Roast Chicken Russian style, Russian Cabbage Soup, Sundried Tomatoes Pasta, Apple Almond Cake, Apple Cheese cake, Chocolate Orange Polenta cake and Mojito.

Some of the cookings and recipes are unique because Emily had a friend from Russia that joined us that night and she cooked some of the dishes. A dinner like this is not cheap. I must emphasize the word "not cheap" because the ingredients cost are shared out among 8 people and the bill total came up to RM400 minus booze!

The kitchen was sure in a hell of a mess. Pity the maid because she had been cleaning and washing from afternoon till night. There were endless of bowls, plates and cutlery to be washed and maybe in her heart she was cursing all of us for using so many utensils! However, she didn't look angry and was still quite willing to help out. Now I know why I love cookout sessions like this - big kitchen and no washing. I still like to stick to my rule - if I cook, I no wash!

Emily has got this cute dog Bobby that loves attention. It just can't stop licking people's toes and legs. I used to be quite afraid of dogs because I had been once attacked by a stray dog before years ago but that day I managed to overcome my fear and played with Bobby. It's such a loving dog and the whole night when we were chatting at the kitchen, it can't stop licking my toes and legs as though it's licking ice-creams. Maybe my legs did taste good! It was better than fish spa (yet to try) and it felt so good. They told me it was a sign of fetish... hmm... I dunno. The cookout session was so good that we are planning to do it again and to start a Facebook group among ourselves for the next cookout!

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Check out the Roast Lamb & Chocolate Orange Polenta Cake Recipe here.