Souvlaki

When I was a student in Melbourne, one of my favourite foods was Souvlaki. There were plenty of greek cafes dotted around Melbourne and I was partial to the souvlaki where the meat was in cubes and grilled on a hot plate rather than the kebab kind where it was sliced off a spit.

When we visited the Gold Coast late last year, I was quite disappointed to find that Souvlaki wasn't as readily available as it was in Melbourne. However, I was really thrilled to be able to find a shop selling souvlaki and to introduce my children to it. They really loved it and I decided I would need to try and make it one day.
One of the things that has stopped my from making Souvlaki is that we dont seem to have souvlaki bread available her in KL. The use of pita bread was never a consideration as the pita we get is somehow to thick. Of late however, I have noticed that the Mission brand has different types of breads - Pita, Naan and also Wraps. The wraps look like kind of a thinner version of a souvlaki bread and so I reckoned I would try it out. In my minds eye, I would use lamb chunks for the meat, make a yoghurt garlic sauce and throw in a bunch of chopped tomatoes and lettuce all wrapped up with the flatbread.

Goulash

One of my Christmas presents last year from The Lovely Wife and the kids was a Le Creuset oval pot. Le Creuset is super expensive in this part of the world and for a long time, both TLW and I have gazed longingly at the Le Creuset displays in the shops.

I used the Le Creuset immediately on Christmas Day 2014 for a casserole and found that leaving meat to slow cook in the oven delivered super soft, tender and tasty meat. So when we were shopping for groceries, I saw some nice cuts of beef and I suggested that I would make Goulash.


"Will it be nice Dads" piped up my princess. "What exactly is goulash?"

I explained that Goulash was a meat stew, generally using beef or lamb in a tomato based sauce with loads of paprika for flavour. The kids had seen a shop in Publika, one of the nearby shopping centres, that served Goulash and they made a reference to that, asking if mine would be better.

"I really dont know coz we haven't tried their Goulash have we?"

The kids proceeded to 'interrogate' me further on when I had last made Goulash, was it nice, if I really knew how to make it, was it nice, why hadn't I made it for them before, was it nice....

Christmas 2014

Christmas this year was a very quiet affair. We contemplated having an open house but decided instead that we would just celebrate it quietly with the family over a nice lunch. The Lovely Wife wanted a nice sit down lunch and asked if she could invite over two of her dearest friends, Lynn and Tina. I decided to make a leg of lamb, a simple citrus salad and a chicken casserole. I would get some pita bread to eat with the lamb, make a little rice and of course potatoes to finish everything off. I contemplated making dessert but since I had made the obligatory chocolate cake, I reckoned that would be enough for dessert.

Usually at Christmas Eve, we host dinner for the extended family where we also open all our presents. However, this year, we celebrated Christmas Eve at my Mom-in-Laws house and my parents joined us there too. Both my brothers had plans of their own so again it was a quiet affair.

My Birthday 2014

Late, late, late! I've been so late in all my posts but I'm trying to catch up. Today is already the 27th of January but the date on this post is 29 November just to coincide with the actual date of my birthday.

So Saturday, 29th November, 2014 was my birthday. The Lovely Wife had initially suggested spending the weekend away but we then realised that my son had Band Practice on Saturday morning so I said we'd just take it easy at home.

I woke up bright and chipper early on Saturday morning to wake up my son. There's nothing like a birthday to make you wake up bright and chipper! This didnt go unnoticed by The Lovely Wife either who remarked to the kids something to the effect that "daddy is so chirpy on his birthday but on normal days grumbles about waking up early!" The Lovely Wife and kids wished me happy birthday and I then went to have my shower and get ready to drop my son off at school.
After my shower, I got the smell of frying bacon and when I went downstairs, I found TLW and my princess in the kitchen - but they quickly shooed me away, saying the kitchen was out of bounds. I proceeded to sit in the lounge and watch some TV while the smell of bacon teased me!



Finally, they brought out a plate consisting of bacon, sausage, mushrooms, an egg sunny side up and a slice of toast together with a small salad. I love my bacon and eggs and it's an inside joke that even when we go for a holiday and there is a full buffet breakfast, I will still have my bacon and eggs. The breakfast was lovely and what a wonderful way to start my birthday!

A Cake and a Meal for a Belated Birthday Celebration

Although we didnt celebrate my sons birthday on the day itself, I still wanted to make him a cake. I love Nutella and when I saw that Matt Preston had a recipe for a flourless Nutella cake that he had showcased on MasterChef Australia, I was rather intrigued. I planted the seed of suggestion in my kids but they didnt seem to enamoured by the thought of a flourless cake. I wasnt too sure either since the recipe called for only two ingredients - Nutella and Eggs.

I tossed about the idea of making him a decadent dessert cake but the more I looked at recipes, the more appealing the idea of the Nutella cake became. I asked The Lovely Wife to get me a bottle of Nutella when she went to the market but didnt check the amount required and told her that a small bottle would be enough. Actually, the small bottle held only 200g of Nutella whereas the recipe called for 240ml. I decided I would just add in some cocoa and also flour as I wanted the cake to be more like a cake rather than a pudding.

I decided I would use self raising flour so that there was some leavening agent.The eggs whipped up beautifully and then I added in some of the Nutella and then the flour and cocoa. The eggs started to deflate rapidly but I put it in to bake nonetheless. It was a disaster!

The cake didnt rise at all and was thick and rubbery. I let it cool and cut out a small piece. It tasted okay but the texture was just too rubbery. My daughter had a bit of a laugh and made a face at me. Was I crushed...

A quiet 13th Birthday celebration

So as I said in my previous post, my son was away at Band Camp on his birthday so we couldnt celebrate it with him. He texted us when he was nearing KL and we picked him up from school around 6.45. He had a good time at Band Camp so that was really nice. We had decided that we would take him out for dinner to celebrate his birthday as we had a lunch to attend that afternoon and we didn't have time to cook.

We got home first to unload his bags and allow him to shower. We had hidden his presents under his bed as usual but didn't tell him anything and he didnt seem to notice. We went for dinner at S.wine at Publika - a place that we had always wanted to try but that always seemed to be packed out with no place. This time, since it was a little later in the evening we managed to get a place although there was still a bit of a wait.

We shared a pork chop and pork ribs, both of which were rather good. The kids weren't too impressed with the Pork Chop although I thought it was quite nice. The food is a bit overpriced though and the place is really crowded. Nonetheless, it was quite a nice dinner.

After dinner, we headed home and I told Mike to go "check under his bed." He grinned and said that he had noticed it earlier while 'sitting on the pot' before taking his shower. He didnt say anything though and pretended that he didnt know about it all through dinner!



We got him a few items as usual. He got a set of Minecraft Handbooks that basically teach you how to build spectacular structures in Minecraft, a set of Lego Mixels and a Lego Mini Figure from Sarah. We also got him a book from the Heroes of Olympus series by Rick Riordan that he enjoys. The proverbial icing in the cake was an Adidas Chelsea t-shirt that he liked very much. To top it off, we went downstairs to find his final present in the freezer - a tub of Ben & Jerrys Ice Cream!



The Ice cream was meant as a present so I didnt use that for dessert. Instead, I remembered that both Mike and Sarah like the 'dirt cup' a dessert at Tony Romas that is basically a kind of chocolate pudding topped with crushed Oreos.




As I didnt have time to make dessert, I took the easy way out and bought two ready made choc puddings, crushed some oreos and served it to them.






It wasn't nearly as nice as what they were hoping for but Michael liked the idea anyway as was very happy! After all some kind of dessert is better than no dessert!

So that was our quiet birthday celebration for my boy who is growing up way too quickly. Happy Birthday Son!