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Easter Getaway 2011, Gerringong

Hello world

I know I’ve been MIA for quite a while now, unfortunately I have no plausible excuse for this disappearance at all. To be honest, I was just lazy. Lazy to bake, lazy to clean up the mess and lazy to blog. But after a long weekend away down in the South Coast, I think I’m back. Spending 4 days away with like minded people, eating stupendous quantity of food is sure to ignite one’s love for food again.

For the Easter long weekend, a group of my friends and I booked ourselves a place down in Gerringong for 4 days, 3 nights. To ensure that we had enough food to last us for the duration of the stay, I allocated myself the task of organising all the food. So the challenge; food for 15-17 people, covering breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks over 4 days. The best way to cover everything was to separate all the meals.

First Dinner – BBQ

I didn’t want this BBQ to be your typical BBQ consisting of steak and sausages. I decided to experiment a little, and so opted for a Thai inspired BBQ. That was the original plan. In the end, it turned out to be a mix of everything. We had grilled Haloumi cheese with lemon and olive oil, grilled zuchini, BBQ portobello mushroom with parsley, garlic and butter, Nem Nuong, Mum’s famous Fried Chicken Wings with home made coleslaw, and Frank and Squishies’ Potato Salad.

The experimental dishes were Gourmet Traveller’s Muu Yang (BBQ pork), Gourmet Traveller’s Gai Yang, and Howard’s take on Ms G’s grilled corn on the cob. I marinaded the whole chicken and pork neck in their respective marinades in a zip lock bag over night. By dinner time, both the chicken and pork neck had absorbed all the flavours of the marinade. Once the BBQ was hot enough, the meat was thrown on to the grill.

Half an hour later, and rested for 10 minutes, both the chicken and pork was ready to be chopped up, served with Neil Perry’s Nam Jin sauce instead of the suggested Tom Sum and Nam jiaw sauce. The fragrant nam jin sauce was the perfect accompaniment to the pieces of charcoaled meats.

We all thoroughly enjoyed Howard’s contribution to the BBQ, they were the only non-meat items on the menu that night. He quickly whipped up the Portobello mushrooms filled with garlic, butter and parsley, all lightly BBQed for a couple of minutes, until the butter melted and seep through the mushroom.

One of my favourite dishes of the night was Howard’s Ms G’s grilled corn on the cob. After the corns were grilled, he added a couple dollops of a mix of sriracha chilli sauce and sour cream to the warm cobs before topping with chopped coriander. Whilst assembling it, we realised we had missed out on one essential ingredient, the parmesan cheese, despite this little mishap, the corns were still delicious, sweet kernels with spicy sour sauce, yum! What a great way to start the long weekend and end the first night.

Breakfast

For the next three mornings, we interchanged the breakfast menus, ranging from sausages, bacon, fried eggs, crisp buttery croissants, scrambled eggs and Mee Goreng. It was such a substantial breakfast that most of the time it kept us full until dinner.

Time between each meals were filled with board games, sun baking, trying to fly a kite through a paddock, watching Max swim in the swimming pool, impromptu karaoke sessions and giving a friend a much needed haircut. All in all, quite  productive aftenroons.

Toward the evening, whilst the boys played a game of ultimate frisbees in the field, the girls were assigned the task of folding wontons and preparing the vegetables for dinner.

Second Dinner – Hot Pot

Before I knew it dinner time had arrived again.

For the second night, Minh’s favourite meal was on the menu. As usual for our hotpot soup, we made some chicken stock, added 3 tablespoon of Tom Yum paste (can be purchased at any asian grocery store), 1 stalk of lemon grass, 5 kaffir lime leaves, 2 teaspoon of tamarind powder (again at asian grocery stores), then finally added 2-3 chopped chillies, depending on your tolerance level.

Ingredients that we often have for hotpot are raw Banana or Tiger prawns, Tofu Fish Balls, Beef Balls, thinly sliced Wagyu Beef, a variety of mushrooms – Shitake, Enoki, and Oyster Mushrooms. We also had a couple of tins of Quail Eggs, which were a big hit. Our greens represented by Chinese Cabbage, a green leafy vegetable which I don’t know the name off, but typically used for hotpot. And finally about 200 Wontons. I know this sounds like alot, but because they were mini sized we polished off most of these.

The great thing about eating hotpot in a large group (at this stage, we had 17 people)  is that once all the ingredients are prepared, each person can fend for themself. They can pick and choose what they would like to eat, cook it in the simmering broth at the pace they like. After what seems like a couple of hours of eating (but was actually only 45 minutes) it was time to get the evening entertainment started. With our stomach filled with hotpot goodies, we quickly got in to our toga costumes, downed a few alcoholic beverages, and as they say, the rest is history. Sorry guys, definitely not sharing those pictures!

An event 4 months in the making had culminated in one evening of crazy eating, drinking, laughing and drawing. Looking back at photos taken of the weekend, I realised this weekend was exactly what I had needed. Some rest and relaxation, spending time with good friends, enjoying ridiculous amounts of food and soaking in a little bit of sun. After this awesome weekend, I feel somewhat revived. Thank you to all my fantastic friends for making the effort to treck down south with me, it wouldn’t have been the same without each and every one of you. Looking forward to our next trip!

Enough about me, I hope you all took the opportunity to enjoy yourselves, whether it be relaxing with families or partying it up with friends. In our every day lives, we all work long and hard enough, so when given the opportunity, take advantage of our most deserved time off.

I’ll leave you with one last glimpse of our weekend, a special rendition of ‘When You Say Nothing at All (feat. Howard)’.