Last night, Decay and I had B, Jules, and Glenn over for dinner ... they also brought over a birthday present for me, 27 days too early (: Which is entirely understandable, since B's leaving soon for her trip ... Thanks guys... we now got square plates and fishy plates! They're really kewl... We were going to take photos of the people and the food, for Em's benefit, but the digital camera's batteries were really quite flat...

So that Em, or anyone else for that matter, can recreate this experience for themselves, this is what we had last night:

Starters: -- we bought these from the local asian grocer ... we're not that good!

• Vegetable Samosas


• Chicken Spring Rolls


• Decay and Droidy's Dipping Sauce

Mains:

• Char Siu - from the Chinese restaurant next to the local asian grocer ...


• <the street that Decay lives in> chicken


• Variation on Decay and Droidy's Stirfry Vegies with noodles


• Droidy's "I don't know what I'm doing so I'll throw something together and hope it works" thai-style salad

Dessert:
This bit kindly provided by Jules ...

• Toblerone Mousse

Midnight Snack:
This bit kindly provided by B and Glenn after their stint in the Bakery earlier that day...

• Doughnuts... mmm ... forbidden doughnut...

Now, hopefully in the time it takes for me to do my recipe typing, I don't accidentally close the browser window ... I know I should do this in another text-editor, but I'm being lazy today... I'll trust my spelling for the time being ... (:

Ok ... here goes:

Samosas and Spring Rolls, Char siu

I trust you can go down to the shops and get these yourself? Or else be all creative and chef-like and make them yourselves (;

Decay and Droidy's Dipping Sauce

• Soy Sauce
• White Vinegar - if you have rice wine vinegar, use that...
• White Sugar
• Chilli Flakes, or fresh chilli
• Spring onions, chopped finely (this is optional... I don't always have some to put in ...)

Method
In a container (I leave the choice to you whether it should be a tall one or a bowl-like one...), mix one part vinegar to three parts soy sauce. Add some chilli - just a little bit if you want the colour, or a lot if you want some fiery stuff... For every shot-glass or so worth of dipping sauce, add about a teaspoon of sugar, or to taste. The final mix should be pretty balanced - not too sweet, or sour, or salty...

Next up ...

Decay and Droidy's Stirfry Vegies with noodles

• Yellow Egg Noodles, which come in bags of bunched swirls from your local asian grocer. Do not use maggi or other equivalent 2-minute noodles, or any noodles where they're all wavy and wriggly - the texture tends to be weird.
• Veggies - this time there was onion, carrot, spring onion. Well, that's all I remember cutting up ... (:
• An Omelette: 2 eggs, some salt and pepper
• Some assorted sauces... probably soy sauce and maybe some oyster sauce

Method
Same way as the original, just different/missing ingredients....

<the street that Decay lives in> chicken

I'll have to take a guess at what's in this cos I have no idea (: Besides the chicken bit...

• One chicken breast ... it was rather large ... sort of like the Pamela Anderson/Dolly Parton of chicken breasts ... Or maybe it was two chicken breasts ... I don't know... it froze around one of the rungs of the freezer shelf so defrosting was interesting.
• Char Siu Sauce - the particular brand we've picked seems to have a lot of garlic in it...
• Soy Sauce
• Honey
• Oyster Sauce
• Onion
• perhaps some other mystery ingredients... I don't know, you'll have to ask Decay

Method

Mix up stuff for your marinade - everything but the chicken and onion. I think it was about a spoonful of everything...

Chop up your chicken breast into bite-sized bits, and then put the chicken bits in a container with the marinade and mix it up a bit so none of the chicken bits feel left out ...

Chop your small onion (or half a fair-sized one) into strips, and sauté til they're sort of see-through. Add the chicken and marinade, and stir around til the chicken's cooked.

Place the cooked stuff onto a serving plate, and voilà, some chicken. Or something. (:

Droidy's "I don't know what I'm doing so I'll throw something together and hope it works" thai-style salad

Here we go ... let's see if I remember all of what I put into this salad thing ...

• Rice Vermicelli - about a handful - follow the instructions to cook them
• Fresh Mint leaves - a small handful. You can get small packs of these at supermarkets.
• Fresh Basil leaves - a small handful.
• Baby Spinach leaves
• Rocket leaves
• Lettuce
• Cucumber
• Tomato
• Carrot
• Apple
• A lime or two
• White vinegar
• Brown Sugar
• Soy Sauce
• Sesame oil
• Fresh Chilli
• Peanuts
• Olive Oil
• Lemongrass shoot
• Salt and Pepper

Method

Get all your herby things (mint, basil, chilli, lemongrass) and chop them all up into strips. Put the chopped stuff in a bowl.

Get all your leafy things (rocket, spinach, lettuce) and chop these all up into strips too. Put this chopped stuff in a different bowl.

The dressing is made of lime juice, some vinegar (you wouldn't need vinegar if you could get enough juice from the limes - we only had one lime), brown sugar, soy sauce, sesame oil, and olive oil. Mix it all up and make it so that it's not too salty/sweet/sour ...

Get all your solid bits (tomato, carrot, apple, cucumber) and chop them up. I grated the carrot, but in hindsight I think that made the carrot disappear. Maybe making them into sticks, and the cucumber into rounds may have worked better?

Get your peanuts out... heat up a frypan, chuck some oil in ... add some salt and sesame oil to this hot pan, and then chuck in your peanuts... turn the heat down on this and shake the peanuts about til they're nice and golden toasty. Lay them out on a piece of paper towelling to absorb excess oil for a while...

To make the salad, mix the herbs into the dressing and let that sit for a while. Mix up all the chopped solid bits and leafy bits and rice vermicelli bits (which I should've snipped a few times cos the strands were a bit long...), then add your dressing and toss appropriately. Thow the peanuts over the top at the end...

Somehow this worked. Don't ask me to repeat it cos it's highly unlikely that I'll be able to reproduce it exactly!

Toblerone Mousse

• Julie
• The selected contents of Julie's kitchen

Method

Get Jules to whip up a batch for you! Serve with berries and more chocolate (:

Doughnuts

*Groan* ... what else can I say to explain the following? (:

• Some Dough ... possibly the monetary form, perhaps some sort of flour and liquid combination ...
• Some nuts - people or legumes... doesn't make much difference
• A bakery

Method
Work at a bakery all day and take home the leftover doughnuts (: