Another cook-out

Yes, over the weekend, we invited another group of friends who have been impatiently dropping 'heavy and no so subtle hints'. Lolz

DH was keen at catering (since they are all good & seasoned cooks themselves) but stubborn me refused to listen as I was keen to try out some new recipes. Yes there is about something extra mouths to feed (aka 'guinea pigs' – but ssssh, don’t tell them OK) that gets me all excited – strange I know! Didn’t manage to do everything on my list and there were some disasters but on the whole things went pretty smoothly.

Come to realize that it must be a local Malaysian custom to not only bring something (ie. not to visit peoples home empty handed) but actual people as well, yes extras.

It seems to be a trend but, for some strange reason, our aim to keep adult numbers to a nice comfortable “8” somehow always spills over to “10”!!! Sigh, again we didn’t have enough chairs and so played a little cosy game of ‘sharing chairs’ - now you know what you need to bring if you ever visit me! Ha ha ha

Go with the flow – that’s the best advice I can share, including a quick big gulp of drink (preferably alcohol); somehow the scene would be much calmer and enjoyable – especially with a bunch of kids - can’t avoid the inevitable noise, running, shouting, mess and some crying.

Anyway, back to the topic of food. Had some difficulty planning for this particular group of friends because we had one ‘Datuk’ who prefers Asian food (specifically the must ‘eat rice’ type, you know what I mean right) and well, I am not really apt with cooking Asian food. To top that, we also have children who seem to prefer Western so you can imagine my dilemma.

Finally opted with something that I was comfortable serving adding one or two Asian dishes and notforgetting some kid friendly food. Can’t please everyone so decided not to try!!

Here are some quick snaps as I didn't manage to grab pictures of everything.

Entrees and Mains

Dips (baba gounash, hummus* and pepperoni*) with crackers and thick slices of baguette

Palmier with olive tapenade filling*


Fresh garden salad



Roasted tomato caprese with mozzarella*


Oven baked chicken wings

Char siew (aka BBQ pork)

Baked beef macaroni

Ham quiche

Yam rice

* * *

Desserts


Baked cassava cake (aka Kuih bingka kayu)

Brownies with Brazilian nuts

Homemade fortune cookies

Macarons with coffee and hazelnut chocolate filling*

Fresh fruits

Some personal thoughts....

Finger-food are great fun to serve and leftovers so much more yummier!! Loved best all the dips especially the olive tapenade (which I will be making again very soon). The rest….well, a little rusty and dusty – fortunately they turned out OK. Will share recipes & tips for some of them. So if interested, do check back later.

The only thing that didn’t actually make it to the table was the focaccia bread, sigh – will need to review and perhaps look for a more reliable recipe. Brownies was a last minute addition as I wasn’t too happy with how the baked cassava cake turned out – not familiar with fresh grated cassava, as the last time I used frozen grated cassava instead - logically the difference should not be too great but somehow this time it turned out different. Glad some people like it though. So in the end there was a little something for everyone, hopefully it was a fun and interesting culinary journey. The company was good though!