Monday, March 26, 2007

The pr0n party

I don't know how to explain my weekend...after our big drunk get together the other week, Moishii came up with this brilliant idea of hosting a pr0n party. Basically, it was a drunken get together where Moishii will screen his pr0n collection on the TV. Yeah......this was going to require A LOT of alcohol......

Firstly, soak the fruit in spirits of some sort

Add to a MASSIVE bowl with other alcohol

Get someone to do a taste test

Decorate the room



We didn't want a repeat of Moishii's 23rd where people were throwing up all over the sinks (Kitchen and laundry) so we decided some food was in order.

Throw together a small Greek salad

I said SMALL!!

Make some Cacik / Tzatziki

Bring out the chips, pasta, pastries and fetta as mezze

Tuscan Chicken and sundried tomato, and spinach and fetta

Get everyone full and liquored up

Start screening the entertainment......

That's errrr...the "cleanest" photo I could put up. *cough*

Yeah......anyhooooo. After a few hours of "entertainment", we finally had it with everyone and kicked them out of the house. Only one person refused to leave. And that was Matt. Yes its Drunken Mama. Moishii ended up grabbing Matt's shoes and hurling them onto the front lawn before kicking his ass out his front door. LITERALLY throwing him out of the house. Matt went sprawling over the front lawn. If only I knew what was happening, I would've grabbed the camera. But all I remember was that I was lying in the dark trying to get some peace and quiet, when I heard a lot of screaming followed by loud thumping and cracking noises. Matt refused to leave until he got some free lollies off Moishii, so Moishii started hurling packets of hard candy at Matt's head. After finally getting Matt out of the house, me, Moishii, Levi and Cherry all decided to go to bed. Well, not together anyway. Moishii gave each of us a room.

10mins after lights out, the door bell rings. Well all stumble out of our individual bedrooms all bleary-eyed thinking who the hell is ringing the door bell at 2:30am. Moishii checks the door only to find the door step empty. We stood around for a good 10secs thinking who the hell pulls pranks like that besides me and Moishii. Suddenly the light bulb on top of my head went *ding*. It might be Matt. I run into the room, tripping on a table and almost putting my head through a glass window and quickly check the streets. Matt's car was still parked across the street.

I race out of the room and scream "ITS MATT!!!" and we all race into Levi's room and threw open the massive window and looked out at the lawn. And there was Matt jumping up and down and screaming his head off. At this point, Cherry though the appropriate action was to jump into bed with the half naked Levi, leaving me and Moishii to deal with the mess.

We decided that ignoring him would be best. That is until he started taking the hard candy and started throwing them at the windows. We threw open the curtains, screamed bloody murder at Matt to go home and went back to bed. 2 mins later, the doorbell rings. We run back to Levi's room and find that Cherry is still in bed with him. We'll deal with that later, we've got a lunatic on the front lawn. Matt goes completely beserk on the front lawn, jumping up and down and trying to strip whilst screaming that he wanted a hug from us. I decided this a Oishii and Moishii production time. I stormed through Moishii's house, threw his bedroom door open and grabbed his video camera. I screamed at Moishii that it was time to fight back. Moishii practically trips down the stairs trying to follow me through the house whilst I was screaming "THE LOLLIES!!! I WANT MORE LOLLIES!! WHERE DID YOU PUT THE LOLLIES!?!?!"

Moishii got a few cartons of hard promotion lollies from work. These lollies taste like the bottom of an old sugar barrel. For some reason,, Matt likes them. But I also think that's because they're free. Well, if Matt likes them so much, he can have them. I've got the camera running at this stage, and Moishii loads his arms up with about 40 packets of these lollies. He throws the front door open and starts hurling pack after pack of lollies at Matt. These lollies make great ammunition. Some of the packets break open, and all you see is this great shower of lollies pelting Matt like it was a machine gun stuck on auto-fire. When Moishii runs out of ammo, he slams the door shut and disappears for a few seconds. Meanwhile, I've still got the camera running and Matt decides to run smack bang into the door and does a blowfish on the glass. Moishii comes tearing through the hallway with something in his hand. The door goes flying open, Matt starts running, Moishii hurls a glass of leftover wine at Matt. God, good thing he didn't get his hands on the punchbowl. There was still a good 2L of punch left. If that hit Matt square in the face, it would've been a kodak moment.

The door closes and retreat back to our rooms, thinking Matt finally got the message of "GO HOME!!". We walked back upstairs only to see Cherry cuddled underneath the blanket with Levi practically doing it in Moishii's parent's bed. EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW. The doorbell suddenly rings which was a perfect distraction from the fact that Cherry has decided to make herself a permanent fixture in Levi's bed.

This time, Moishii has had it. He storms into the garage and starts tearing through the boxes looking for a chainsaw. Luckily he didn't find the chainsaw, but its not like he knew how to start it anyway. He finds a handsaw and chases Matt down his front lawn screaming bloody murder. Bottles and more lollies are hurled around before Moishii comes running back in. Matt decides to slam himself against the glass door again and proceeds to lick it. God we need to disinfect the door now.

We decided that it was time to truely ignore Matt and hope he would go away before we call the cops on him. It was now close to 3am. Since we were still awake from the screaming and running, we grabbed a torch and stormed into Levi's room to find the 2 of them almost naked. Moishii decides to jump in and breakup whatever was happening. Luckily this was all captured on tape. Again, we hear more screaming from Matt. We peeked through the window andsaw him finally pick up every single packet of lollies and loaded them into the car before driving off. THANK GOD! PEACE AT LAST! Well, unless there was going to be sounds coming out of Levi's room.

I didn't wake up til late in the day when Cherry decided to quietly slip out of the house. Apparently Levi also quietly slipped out of the house. Hmmmmm.

Anyway, this is the aftermath:


Not sure if you can see the massive 4L cask at the end of the table...but yeah. It was a big night. Lots alcohol, lots of pr0n on tv, some pr0n in real life and Matt. I think everyone was all pr0ned out by the end of the night.....and woke up with a massive hangover. I took me and Moishii a good 2-3 hours to even get ready to go out.....

Saturday, March 24, 2007

I love Big Johns...

...the restaurant that is. I've been meaning to go to Big John's ever since I've heard of them. Which has been a good 4-5 years, but I've never made the effort to go all the way to San Souci. Considering all the stuff that has been happening with Moishii, we didn't get much of a chance to catch up last week (Ok, drunken bashes do not count), so we decided to make a night of it and head on over to Big John's.


They serve Moet et Chandon!

Take away pizza menu



We knew that Big John's serve massive amounts of food, but I didn't really believe they were THAT massive. Plus, the traffic getting there was atrocious. By the time we were served, I was about to eat a whole cow. And I almost did!

Garlic french sticks

You can't have a catch up without alcohol - Lambrusco

King Prawn Caesar salad

It wasn't a "Chicken night" so we had asked them to change the chicken to King Prawns. The prawns were so.....prawny! And they were bursting in your mouth!

A photo to show how big the serves REALLY are

Spaghetti Marinara

The pasta was HUGE! Like HOOOOOOGE!! Luckily, with all the shells that came with it, it wasn't too painful to finish. But I didn't touch the 1/2 crab it came with. That's because I was busy with the bugs, mussels, scallops, squid and massive tiger prawns hidden amongst the pasta.

Veal Scallopine

Oh, my gosh. You see that deep fried aracini ball in the top left of the plate? That was a tennis ball sized ball. There was about 5-6 slices of veal, and I reckon thats about 1/2kg of vegetables on that plate!!

Bugs!!

This also came with a ball of aracini, but no 1/2kg of veggies thank goodness.

Champagne Prawns

OK, this came with the 1/2kg of veggies AND the ball. Good thing that prawns aren't that filling....but then considering how much food they serve, everything is filling!! We practically had to roll out of there!

I actually really enjoyed Big John's. When I was trying to find their website (They don't have one) I ended up looking through the reviews at eatability. And they got shocking reviews. Why did I still go? Because I always take those reviews with a grain of salt. They complain about the long lines, the horrible food and the horrible service. The problem with 90% of those complaints is that people are going there on a Friday or Saturday night, when they're WELL KNOWN to be packed until bursting at the seams. Very simple solution, DON'T GO ON WEEKENDS!! We went on a weeknight and there was no wait and it wasn't crowded. I can understand why people would complain if they rocked up on a weekend.

Yes the place can get very very packed. 75% of the seats were taken on a Wednesday night! Imagine a weekend when the place is completely packed, the pizza oven going full boil and lack of air conditioning. Yes, Big John's has a lot to improve on. A bigger shop, air conditioning, maybe learning to take Credit Card/EFTPOS, and I would imagine on the weekend, better service and more organisation. BUT, Big John's isn't about that. The food is NOT authentic Italian, but the food is good. The quality of service isn't that great, but the quantity served is GIGANTIC! When restaurants are busy, quality slips, but I think everyone should give Big John's a go. Go on a week day, experience their food and service when there isn't a mob of hungry people waiting outside demanding blood.

Sunday, March 11, 2007

A weekend of cooking and a birthday

After last week's conference, I needed this weekend to recover. So I spent the weekend at home watching TV and cooking:

Spaghetti mutated bolognese

I also got to try out a recipe I've kept hidden up my sleeve for awhile. "Braised Pork with egg and coconut juice - Thit Heo Kho". Its a recipe I saw on "Food Safari" awhile back, and instead of looking up the recipe before making it, I decided to make it from memory. Luckily, I have a really good memory! I'm not going to write the recipe since I don't exactly follow the quantities anyway.

Firstly I marinated the pork for a few hours:

Marinated pork belly


Then I defrosted some young coconut juice and removed the flesh to stew the meat in:

Young coconut juice

I added a few hard boiled eggs after simmering the meat for an hour:

Add boiled eggs to the stew

The finished product

I couldn't believe how good this turned out!! (Especially since I didn't follow the recipe) The meat melts in your mouth and the egg is flavoured with the delicious sauce that is sweet with a subtle taste of coconut juice. I will definitely be making this dish again and again! Even my family loved it! The only complaint I got was from my nephew, and that there wasn't enough eggs for him to eat!

It's also my nephew's 10th birthday on Tuesday, but since I've got volleyball on Monday nights, I wouldn't be able to get home in time to bake him a cake for Tuesday. So instead, I offered to bake him a cake for tonight. And since I was baking a cake, we decided to have dinner and celebrate his birthday as well.

Stir fried mixed vegetables with fish cake and pork tongue

This sounds a bit gross, but if no one told you what was in it, you would be asking what is that beautiful meat in the stir fry? Its so tender and....porky...My mum cooked it awhile back, and I've been requesting that she makes it again and again! Its too nice! Oh, and the fish cake was hand made by my sister. Not bad for her first attempt.

Black pepper lamb and chicken casserole

This is one of our family favourites. Its probably more Asian than its casserole considering its seasoned with soya sauce and oyster sauce, but its sooo good! My mum loads the dish up with heaps of coarsely ground black pepper giving the dish a nice heat to the tongue. Usually I always have this dish with a big bowl of instant noodles (No sauce or seasoning) to soak up the sauce.

Pipi in XO sauce on a bed of rice noodles

Pork trotters in vinegar

And of course, there was the cake. Since I didn't decide to make the cake until late last night, I was a bit low on ingredients, but found just enough stuff to whip up two cakes:


My little cousin trying to get to the cake!

Raspberry swirl cake with a white chocolate glaze

Mocha Mud cake with a white chocolate glaze

Last minute decorations

Happy birthday Brandon!

MmmMMm Moist mocha mud cake

The raspberry swirl

Oh, and Gus, hope you're legs feeling better! I would bring you some cake for tomorrow night's game, but since you're MIA, looks like more for me!

Gus's bruised, hairy ankle

Saturday, March 10, 2007

Musashi

I can't believe I didn't put these photos up earlier! I was rearranging my photos when I found these photos of dinner at Musashi for Josie's welcome home. It was a girls night out and we all gathered at Musashi for a bit of food and gossip:

Sushi Platter $38

Scampi Sushi - $10.80

Tofu Steak - $6.80

Nabeyaki Udon Noodle - $9.80

Wagyu Teriyaki Beef - $16.50

Mix Okonomiyaki - $14.80

Great food, and even better company. What else could you ask for? Oh, how about some cocktails afterwards whilst the gossip session continued late into the night?

Musashi Dining Bar
http://www.masuya.com.au/en/musashi/index.html
447 Pitt Street
(Cnr. Pitt & Campbell Street)
Sydney
Ph: (02) 9280-0377