Easter Feast

Yesterday we had a lovely Easter dinner at Wilbrod House. The food was just fantastic!!! I feel so spoilt living in the House, because whenever we have a potluck party or a feast, the food is always superb (my taste buds never complain).

Here are just some of the dishes we had:

Deviled eggs, some of which were made from the hard-boiled eggs we used for the Easter egg hunt in the afternoon. [I have to say the Easter egg hunt was a lot of fun. Made me feel like a kid again. :)]


Macaroni and Cheese.


Pasta Carbonara, made by a new housemate from Italy.


Ham, which is traditional fare during Easter here in Canada. This one was really delicious -- it was far, far better than what I'd ever tasted in Australia over the years.

For this Easter feast, I made some vanilla ice cream, laced with blueberry coulis. The vanilla ice cream recipe from LCB Ottawa is so good that I know it won't be the last time I make it.

Actually, I didn't like vanilla ice cream until I came to Ottawa, because the store-bought vanilla ice cream (especially what you find in Australian supermarkets) generally tastes pretty awful to me. However, the LCB Ottawa recipe uses (real) vanilla beans, and I can assure you it makes the world of difference. And once you have tasted vanilla ice cream made with quality vanilla beans, you can never go back to the ice cream made with vanilla essence (or artificial flavour). Trust me!

Tamales

We made Tamales today. DF, the owner of Wilbrod House, started preparing the ingredients yesterday, e.g. soaking the corn husk, preparing the chili sauce and ingredients for the tacos, cooking the masa (cornmeal dough) and the pork filling, etc. At 2pm today, she took us through the process of wrapping the tamales. All of us sat around the dining table for about an hour, helping to wrap the masa and pork filling with the soft corn husk (see photos below).


Here, you can see the corn husk, corn dough (masa) and pork filling in the tamale.


This is what wrapped tamales look like. They are then steamed in a pot until the corn dough is cooked.


These were the ingredients to go with the tacos.

The tamales (esp. the spicy pork filling inside) tasted so good that I ended up eating five of them. I think I decided I was going to have lunch, dinner and supper all at once. :)

I really enjoyed the mixed salad with the balsamic vinegar dressing too. It was made by one of the cuisiniers in the House. I believe the dressing contained a reduction of balsamic vinegar, syrup, raspberry puree, and some other secret ingredients that the housemate refused to divulge. There is something to be said about living in a house with people who cook well.

Anyway, we had a real feast -- it's one of the best we've had in the House. All of us had fun. The dining room was filled with lively conversations and laughter. I hope the new housemates (who just arrived a few days ago) enjoyed this activity. I can assure them there will be many more such parties to come.

Chinese New Year 2009 Celebrations

This year Chinese New Year falls on 26 January 2009 (same day as Australia Day). Last night (Saturday night) my housemates and I decided to celebrate Chinese New Year by having some of our classmates over for a Asian potluck party. (Aside: Since many of us have classes on Monday, 26 January, we opted to celebrate Chinese New Year on the weekend.)

The rule for the potluck party was: either you make some Chinese/Asian food (some people learned to make Asian dishes for the first time, from online recipes or with the help of Asian housemates in Wilbrod House) or you bring drinks (i.e. alcohol). I made a vegetarian dish with beancurd sheets, fresh water chestnuts, bamboo shoots and four different kinds of Chinese mushrooms that I bought from a Chinese grocery store about 10 minutes' walk from Wilbrod House.

Here's some of the things we had for dinner:


A veritable feast indeed.


BBQ Duck (centre of the photo), Beef Rendang and Lemang (the green things), Spicy BBQ Pork Buns, Chinese Dumplings (3 types of fillings: Chicken, Pork and Vegetarian).


Japanese Fried Rice, General Tso's Chicken (with Broccoli), Steamed Fish with Soy & Ginger Dressing, Stir-fried Rice Cake with Pork and Mushroom.


Vegetarian Spring Rolls, Chop Suey with Shrimps, Steamed Vegetarian Beancurd Rolls, more Dumplings and Spicy BBQ Pork Bun.


Appetisers: Century Eggs (preserved duck eggs) with Deep-fried Enoki Mushrooms, Sweet and Sour Pork (served in cherry tomatoes), Egg Tofu, Shrimp and Shiitake Mushroom Canapes, Spicy Jellyfish and Kelp. You can also see a vegetable carving of a white dragon (with Daikon Radish).


Mini Pineapple Tarts/Cookies and a Watermelon Carving.


In the foreground is Umai (a salmon salad dish).


Fortune Cookies that an invited guest brought, Mango Pudding, Strawberry Tart

I always love these potluck parties at Wilbrod House. Everyone here (including invited guests) are aspiring chefs, and the dishes produced are always of a high quality (even if it is someone making a recipe for the first time).

In the end, there was enough food to feed 25 people and there were still leftovers, which we ate today. With a wonderful gourmet feast, lively Chinese pop music and good company, it was a most enjoyable evening indeed!

New Year's Eve

I spent New Year's Eve with friends and housemates at Wilbrod House. We made a special dinner for the occasion. It was lovely.


New Year's Eve dinner at Wilbrod House.

At 11pm, we all walked to Parliament Hill to watch the fireworks at midnight. It was freezing cold. About -17 degrees Celsius, plus wind chill. It was quite an experience for me to be out in the cold for about an hour. Even though we were all rugged up really well (the way we were dressed, you could only see our eyes), my legs and fingers were almost numb from the biting cold...
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I am a bit sad today because I found out yesterday morning that Mrs Enid H., a family friend for over 40 years, passed away in Warrnambool, Australia, on 30 December 2008 (the date of my last post). She shall remain in our hearts and memories forever. RIP, Aunt Enid.

Christmas Eve

Yesterday was Christmas Eve. I made some pear danish in the morning (see photo below). I took some canned pears and sliced them into fans, and place them on the croissant dough that I had prepared and frozen last week. Personally, I think this canned-pear version was better than the peach version I made last week, simply because I liked the flavour of the pears better. (Aside: In production kitchen, they use canned pears and apricots, but not canned peaches.)



After breakfast, a housemate and I mopped and cleaned the dining room and kitchen from wall to wall. We just wanted to have a nice and clean place to enjoy the festivities.

Then, around lunchtime, I prepared my mushroom strudel for dinner. I basically sauteed some mixed mushrooms (button, cremini, shiitake, chanterelles, porcini) in butter and rolled that inside some filo/phyllo pastry. I left the strudel in the fridge until closer to dinner time before baking it till golden brown.

(Aside: I prepared my mushroom strudel around lunchtime because there is only one kitchen in Wilbrod House and it was too crowded for all of us to do our cooking around dinnertime, so we worked out a system to get around this problem.)

Here you see all the dishes prepared by us:

Starting from the foreground: Seafood paella, Greek lamb stew, Goulash, Mushroom strudel, Sushi, Pizza. It was quite a feast. We still have some leftovers for today. :)


Yakisoba


Sushi


Mushroom Strudel


Goulash


Greek Lamb Stew


Seafood Paella

After dinner, we walked to the Notre-Dame Cathedral (not far from Rideau Centre) and enjoyed a lovely concert and midnight service. Not all of us are catholic, but we went along anyway, because the service was open to all and sundry. I really liked the Christmas carols presented in the concert. Beautiful voices in a magnificent setting...

This is the nativity scene inside the cathedral:


Here are some of the ornate structures inside the cathedral:




All in all, it was an interesting day for me.

Viva Mexico & Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival

Last night my Mexican housemates celebrated the Mexican Independence Day (Sep 16) by cooking up a storm and treating all of us to a lovely homemade Mexican meal. I have to say, the food (esp. the sopes) was delicious!!!

The sopes are the round, tart-like things you see in the photos.

The Mexican housemates also served up horchata (a refreshing, rice-based Mexican drink), and I liked this a lot. It sort of reminded me of sweetened soy milk, but the flavour is much milder.

Later in the evening, other housemates brought out the homemade mooncakes to celebrate the Chinese mid-autumn festival (Sep 14). These were really nice too. (Pity it rained all day in Ottawa yesterday, so we didn't get a chance to see the full moon.)



It is great to live in this multicultural (and multilingual) household, especially when the housemates are pretty good cooks. I am looking forward to the Canadian Thanksgiving (mid-October) and Halloween (end of October).