I woke up this morning to find a note in the kitchen...



How cute! Dad had gotten up early, gone for his swim, and then to the bakery. Chimmys in Kew, I do believe.

This is the pumpkin and onion sourdough... it was very crusty and had a wonderful soft interior texture.


pumpkin n' onion sourdough

And here's the chocolate brioche. Enough said.

This weekend I went up to my friend Alistair's holiday house in Red Hill to celebrate his 21st birthday with a group of friends from my old work. I hadn't seen any of them in ages, but it seems that in my absence, my brother Daniel has been bigging up my cooking to them.

I made the birthday cake (a simple sponge), some chocolate biscuits and some beer-snack-stylee cheese stars. (Detailed descriptions to appear on my How to Eat Blog shortly).


joe with stars


Jo, Al, Jaffe with stars


symone reading my article


the cake


allstar w cake


box o' cookies


1/2 cake

The food I made went down pretty well - we ate the cheese stars by the pool with beer (see above), and the cake & chocolate biscuits after dinner. They went in a flash! It was a 25cm cake (275g butter, sugar, flour, 5 eggs) and it fed 15 of us.


people like icing

Symone, Chantelle and I also made up a batch of Cadbury's Cherry Ripe muffins which we found in the pantry. We couldn't, sadly, find a muffin tin, so we made it in a square tin and they became brownies. They were pretty good, especially for a packet mix, but it could easily be made without the packet. It's basically a chocolate muffin with coconut, glacé cherries and chocolate chips.


stirring


chan tasting mixture


cherry ripe brownies

Late at night, Nick & Jerome made nachos, which were totally awesome.

Me: Hey, these are good nachos!
Nick: Hey, did you hear that? We got a compliment! The gourmet chef likes our nachos!


Nachos

Michael made pancakes (Defiance shaker pancake mix) for breakfast, which were good too! I put nutella on mine and also strawberry jam.


michael made pancakes

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ALISTAIR!

GONG XI FA CAI!

Chinese New Year is the most important day in the Chinese calendar. There are many little traditions to follow, many of which are, sadly, not followable in Australia. But the general point is that you start the first day as you intend the rest of the year to be.

The most important tradition, especially in our family, is the Chinese New Year's Eve reunion dinner, where the whole family comes together and partakes in delicious Chinese food. (The food we eat is Malaysian Chinese, as are we).

My mum is always in charge of this dinner, and it is always fabulous. You know, I was really disappointed that Nigella didn't have a Chinese New Year section in Feast - she had at least 4 other types of new year feasts in there. Le sigh.

Menu:


CNY supper


Curry Chicken Kapitan: Chicken pieces in a coconut-onion sauce. Mum also includes kaffir lime leaves in this for extra deliciousness.

Loh Bak: Now, this is the best thing ever. Minced pork (we used to use chicken but not anymore) mixed with spices and wrapped in beancurd skin and deep fried. It's served with chilli sauce (actually, half chilli, half ketchup) and cucumber. Eating this is one of the best parts of being Malaysian.


Kiam Chye Th'ng (duck soup with mushrooms, tomatoes and salted vegetables). Traditionally this has pork in it, but we stopped putting it in when I stopped eating pork, and even though I'm eating pork again, mum seemed not to have included it this year.

And the most important part of the meal... RICE! Delicious rice! After being on the How to Eat diet for about 9 months now, I sorely, sorely miss eating rice.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!