Punyalah panjang, gambaq pun tak dak... Sorry...

So Monday is here again.

Sigh…

I wasn’t prepared for today because sleep has not left my body yet. It is hovering around, especially around my eyes and my mouth, which kept opening to emit oxygen into the brain.

Yawn…

There I go again.

So it is Monday huh ? Well then I have to tell you about my weekend, even if it was a boring one. But my last weekend was definitely not.

A good friend of mine, one that I have been friends with since we were 5 asked me to cater for her party. Errk !

When I was living in sek 7, I did that a lot. All of my clients (tu dia… clients tuh) only ever asked for 1-2 dishes. Usually a pan of lasagna or cottage pie. Or my beef casserole. Or meatball pasta bake. Cream caramel, orange caramel, normal butter cake or trifles are popular when it comes to desserts. Although a lot demanded cream puffs but because to make them is quite difficult, I usually mengelak but I did make them for close friends.

Nevertheless I have never been asked to cater for 30 people all on my own. People usually ordered from me to compliment their main dishes, but to cater for the whole party ?

Aku terduduk kejap sebab panic.

She ordered lasagna, chicken pie, cottage pie and one pasta bake. For desserts, trifle.

It seemed a lot and I was quite scared. But I was rather intrigued too, I must say. So I kept on talking to her. Okay, lasagna minced beef, cottage pie minced beef so the pasta bake must be without beef. So I suggested penne sausage bake.

Trifle aku suka sebab senang. In my head I planned the normal fruit trifle with custards and strawberry jelly. Plus my favourite blackforest trifle which I haven’t made in a long time. The blackforest trifle is truly decadent okay. We start of with chocolate sponge at the bottom layer, then black cherries on top, swiftly followed by chocolate custard and finally a layer of light mascarpone cheese.

Yummm….

Walaupun seram-seram because I haven’t a clue how to do it, I told her that since the party is at 8, I will prepare the food and she will bake it at her home. However and this is a very big however, they are having the party at a rented apartment with no oven even a micromave in it.

Errr…..

So I scoured my recipe books and had a long hard think but I could think of nothing that would taste nice after being cooked at 5 pm and consumed 3 hours after that. Especially with baked food, if not eaten immediately some would turn soggy and some would be dry.

I was in two minds about it as I am not expert enough to put all the problems into consideration and incorporate them in my food, ie. the ones that would be soggy I should make them dryer and those that would be dry, well… I’d have to make them soggier… he he… Kalau nak, mee kari boleh lah… Nasi goreng ke ? He he…

I told her so, fearing my cooking would fail me and her, but she still wants me to do it. And seriously I do not need much persuasion as I do love to cook so I said yes. She must have read my blog, the naughty girl as she changed the dessert menu from trifles to fruits tarts.

Okay. Therein lies the problem as to make the shortcrust pastry ain’t easy and to make 50… well I need time. So I asked somebody else to make the pasta bake, the easiest one on the menu.

Second problem, price.

Ha ha… I don’t even know the amount of ingredients needed to master this feat let alone the prices ! Thirty people requires 5 kg of minced beef for lasagna ? What about the chicken pie ? Is 1 whole chicken enough ? Luckily Bei came to the house to learn making cottage pie the week before so I used that as a basis.

But still I was riddled with doubt.

While seriously not knowing if my raw material calculations was even remotely adequate, I just ploughed on and quoted a price. That after going around Giant and Tesco with a long list to jot down the price of each ingredient first. It looked so bloody expensive when I sms-ed it to her, I winced. Ayoyo… the food had better be good, okay. And enough for 30 people as aku pakai taram aje…. Minced meat banyak ni, ayam banyak ni, ntah apa-apa banyak ni. Yang aku confident is the tart because she specifically asked for 50 pieces.

Friday, my day started after work. Swung by Tesco Extra and bought loads and loads and loads of minced beef. Plus other stuffs. Got home and started preparing before going off to Tesco for stuffs that I couldn’t get at Tesco Extra. I really do not know what the Extra was for as Extra it was defintely not.

Made the sauce for lasagna and the chicken filling for the pie. Hmm…. After that is done, I took out the aluminuim foil pan and tried to see if it is enough for 1 or 2 pans. I then turned my attention to the tartlets.

Saturday is the day of reckoning. I still send the maid away as she wouldn’t know what to do anyway. Replaced her with my sister and was very relieved when mum came to assist. Kamil also took leave. Wonderful, wonderful boy.

I started with the béchamel sauce first and that was the first thing that went wrong. I love mushrooms and over did it a bit with the fungi and therefore the sauce tasted like mushroom soup. Woopsy !

Took out the rest of the minced to thaw while I prepared the pastry for the pie. Sungguh I was so shocked as 2 ekor ayam can only fit in 1 pan. 2 ekor !! Hmmm….. I have no time to make some more and besides the price that I quoted was all used up for that one pie. I sweated a bit at the thought of the lasagnas so I started layering it up first. Hmmm…. I got to 2 pans worth.

So… lasagna is cheaper than the chicken pie then.

Second thing that went wrong happened when I fried the minced for the cottage pie. I don’t know if you could relate to this but it just smelt too beefy. Even my mom looked inside the huge wok to see what was wrong. Hmmm…. discussed and agreed that I cannot risk the health of my clients so my sister was dispatched to get fresher beef. And she came back with frozen beef that made me cry once because of its tastelessness.

All the fresh ones were gone, apparently. Ah… today is the day when the entire damn minced beef in Shah Alam laku. Everybody and their aunty are stocking up on minced beef. Discussed again and agreed tastelessness can be repaired but sakit perutness can result in a lawsuit. I fought valiantly to cajole the beefy taste out and eventhough my mum and my sister said it turned out okay, I was disappointed. Tak baca Bismillah ka aku pagi-pagi tadi ?

By 3, my sister was mashing the potatoes and Kamil hampaq tikaq on the kitchen floor to pipe the custard and chocolate filling for the tarts. Strawberries for the chocolate and blueberries for the custard. Kamil did a good job as it was neat and oh so cute. I started baking everything at 3.30 and at 5.10, my client was at the front gate. The cottage pie was still browning in the oven.

Kelam kabut sikit when Kamil managed to house only half of the tarts. "You beli tak cukup..." he said accusingly. Mana mungkin, I thought, as I tore down the house looking for the plastic packagings for the tarts. I remember buying 20 pieces. When I returned to the kitchen empty handed and half crazy, I heard my sister and my mom laughing and saw my husband grinning at them while separating the double layer from each packaging. Buang masa !!!!!!!!

I have to agree that the house smelt heavenly. E**y and his wife who came to pick up the food commented on the lovely smell, ooh-ing and aah-ing at the sight of the cute tarts, but I waved them goodbye with knotted stomach anyway. My sister turned the earlier beef with the suspicious smell into cottage pie for our own consumption. She didn’t want to waste so I just let her. We ate it and well…. nothing happened. Maybe.. and this is just a big maybe, lembu tu tak mandi kot…. Hmmm….

By 6 I was so darn hungry but there was nothing to eat except the tarts. And that was when I remembered about the food that was sent to my by an angel pukul 11.30 pagi tadi. The angel (hang jangan kembang, satgi jadi belon susah nak tangkap) said she knew I would be too busy to cook while cooking (he he……) and was she right. I was too hungry beyond words so while waiting for our own cottage pie to brown in the oven, kami anak beranak shared the fried macaroni. Yumm ! Thank you….

It was hard to pry open my eyes Sunday morning but we had to as the kids had to be sent to their tennis class. Fetched my mom and drove to pasar (Bei now I understand why you called it Pasar Meru because the name is Pasar Besar Jalan Meru). Kamil ordered us to get in and get out of the extremely dirty and watery and urgghh pasar quickly because the stench that very day was unbearable.

I tried making butter prawns for lunch with little success. The hard part, which was the egg floss, was quite a good first attempt (he he…) on my part, but the actual udang didn’t turn up like the ones I paid for. I fried small bawal-like fish which was a big mistake because Umar was still at the table long after us 3 settled on the sofa to watch the telly. How long ? Well about an hour because we managed to watch 2 sitcoms.

I opened the fridge to be greeted by now empty Tupperware of leftovers tarts. Looked at my family and my husband gave me a sheepish grin coupled with his very flared nostrils, guilty of scoffing down the whole lot (there were like 10 pieces) the night before. He, at that very moment, was dunking strawberries into the chocolate creams, resolutely ignoring Adik's “Bah ! Give me the whole box !”, while waving her spoon angrily.

Tak reti kenyang dia orang ni. We then settled upstairs to watch The Ugly Truth and then Taken. I do not know why I always get a botched Taken CD. This is the third attempt to watch the damn movie. Hissh !

I settled to read instead and promptly heard my husband snoring. By 6.30 he was still making horrible, horrible noises so I went to fetch Neti and singgah beli dinner for the kids. On the way home, dear husband called and demanded of my whereabouts. Panic pun kan… Janji nak pegi ambik Neti, last-last aku pi sorang. Hampeh sungguh.

When I got home, ada hati dia kata, “La… I kan kata nak bagi budak-budak makan nasi ayam…Awat you beli ni ?” Hiiii… banyak lah songeh so aku bagi dia cubitan yang tak manja langsung untuk memuaskan hati.

We got ready and by 8 Noreen came knocking on the door. We drove to Kokopelli to celebrate her birthday. Ian was joining us from Putrajaya. The food was good, I have to say and I really recommend it. The owners, a Malay artist whose name I have forgotten, turned a small bungalow into a restaurant and the ambiance I have to say, is wonderful.

We raced home because we have 2 Man U fans with us and so Noreen and Kamil settled on the sofa to yell at Liverpool. I went up to pray then went down for awhile and talked to Ian a bit before remembering that I have an sms to answer and went up again.

Tiba-tiba dah pagi.

Ha ha… sorry Noreen and Ian.

Tapi yang bestnya, this morning when I went into the kitchen, and saw the bread tray was filled to the brim again. Ha ha.. nampaknya ada orang pergi kedai sorang-sorang…. Tulah….

Ya Allah Ya Tuhan ku… panjangnya….