Dinner for 12???

All of a sudden I feel the rare need to blog. I don't know why, but as I had just finished doing my laundry & read my daily quota of blogsites, I am having this urge to type what seems to be endless amounts of words spewing out of my mind. All this while I'm trying to concentrate on 3 simultaneous football games, 1 on the TV, 2 off the Internet & cheering for teams I didin't even knew existed. How the thrill of winning a little pocket money can inject copious amounts of adrenaline is bewildering.

Anyhow today was a day, complete with food, food & food. Then again, with me I suppose (as many of my friends would attest to) it always has something to do with food. In one of the few weekends that I woke up in the morning (as opposed to past noon after a 'social' Saturday night), I decided to have accompany LM for breakfast with my brother-in-law & his family. It's always a thrill to meet his family as it also includes two lil 'devils' aged 4 1/2 & 2 1/2. The amazing thing about kids is that they will always have an answer to every question you throw at them. Whats even more astounding is their ability to remember the most innate & irrelevant details from the past & then challenge our older & rather poisoned gray matter on such issues.

Back to the topic of breakfast, we went to the newly opened Overseas Restaurant in Sri Petaling for dim sum. Overseas has just started (about 2 months) a new branch just behind their existing lot in Sri Petaling and this outlets serves mostly dim sum. It is the only outlet which starts at 7am and remains open throughout till 9pm. Excellent! I now have a place for good, delectable dim sum throughout the day! Anyhow, going through the menu, they have a few varities beyond the usual spread of siew mai & har kau. In fact a pleasant surprise for me was their fried xiaolong pau served with double boiled broth of shark bone. The whole breakfast experience was a good one & I would defintely recommend this place for future meetings.

Then it was off to LM's place to gather some ingredients that I require for my cookout in the evening. I was having my aunts & uncles over for dinner. Cooking for a party of 12 doesn't seem too daunting a task until one starts to think of the many possibilites & decides to make all those possibilities a reality. The original plan was to cook an Oriental dinner for my relatives as we thought this was what would satisfy their palate best. Then I had to start on my 'East meets West' concept & decided to create 2 hors d'oeuvre. They were Bangers & Mash (served in a soup spoon) & roast duck cabbage roll. Simple, as I've made them before. However the B&M did not turn out as expected, mainly as the sausage I used was not as nice as the classic ones. Oxford Pork Sausages did not work very well and I would probably avoid this sausage in the future. The cabbage roll was decent although my guests commented that the hoisin sauce served to accompany it was too salty. I think perhaps its due to the fact that the hoisin sauce is supposed to be spread on the inside of the roll. However the last time I did this, the roll began to 'bleed' as the thick sauce would encourage the moisture from the greens to leak out. Looks like I've still to find a better solution.

The main dinner was a proper sit down meal where I had to set up another table as my permanent dinner table was enough for a maximum of 8 persons. LM whipped up quite a storm for this. She cooked Fu Kua man Kai (chicken stir-fried with bittergourd), steamed red snapper, Stir-fried stem of Kailan with roast pork and lettuce with oyster sauce. Accompanying this spread was a double-boiled 'moo far kor' soup. I also spruced up the menu with a serving of 'tung-kwai' herbal roast duck packed from Hoppy Restaurant. LM's mom decided to aid us by cooking a pot of Stewed Pork Knuckles (Lou Chee Keok) which turned out to be a hit. All in all it was a bountiful dinner for 12. Rambutans from my parents served as a perfect intermediate dessert.

Following this was a platter of 5 different creations from Bakerzine, which by then although everyone was famished, we all defied the odds and started to polish up whatever was being served. Austrian coffee (which is what I'm using right now) seemed to be the perfect end to the evening. By then its was already close to 10pm and my relatives have a trip back to Cheras ahead of them, hopefully with a bellyfull of niceties & also a good night's sleep. I'm rather happy it turned out decent although I was running about 30 mins behind schedule and that I did not spend as much time conversing with my aunts & uncles.

Ahh.... the MU game's just ended and MU only won by a measly 1 goal margin. Not the best result for me but I'm not complaining. It is now time for me to turn in and ponder on the multitude of dinners I will be attending in the coming weeks due to weddings, gala dinners, Gourmet Festival & annual dinners. Once again the 'I will start to watch my diet intake from now on' will have to take a backseat at least till after CNY....