The Best Sort of Dinner

Our respective schedules mean that it's tough to get together. Not too difficult to meet one another in twos for dinner. Lunch is always dicey. We've not dropped the habit of working through lunch, or doing other things during the hour, except eat. Getting more than 3 together for a meal is next to impossible. It can probably happen at most, thrice a year.

This must be a special sort of day when somehow, more than 3 of us could make the date. Dinner was fixed, and eveeleva generously opened up her dining room. She then offered to cook dinner. OMG. YES. I'd love to taste her cooking. No one cancelled, everyone made it. It was so nice to sprawl and chill out, staring out of the window to the colorful playground below the block, hearing the evening sounds of people coming home and the estate buzz, smells of different kinds of food bubbling, checking out her toddling young ones, catching up with everyone. I miss this bunch of girls.

We felt a tad bad that because of this dinner, eveeleva had to be busy all day in the kitchen preparing the ingredients, stirring, frying, cleaning up and all. So many hours on her feet. I know exactly the tremendous effort it takes to do a meal like this. We did nothing and simply turned up to eat. We got there early, but there was no way we could help with the food. Heeeeee. Though we could wash dishes! She has 2 active little boys to look after too! When her husband came home, he sweetly took charge and after their bath, put them to bed. Awwwww.

THE begedil.

The lovely lass made 2 portions of begedil for us. One with beef, and one without- plain, specially for meeeeeee. I love the woman! Now, I can't quite remember how many plain ones were there. Maybe 6 or 8. I kinda forgot to share and ate them all up...oops. The begedil, da best. She wasn't bluffing when she promised to make me one of the best begedil around. They're fantastic. Unsalted, they're full of the lovely potato-y flavors. There was sambal of course. How can any meal not have sambal?! Mmmmm. I tell you, I was in begedil heaven. Now, I'm going to judge all begedil by hers. Where to find??!!!

There was soup. Tom yam seafood soup. FWAAAH. She got the spices down pat. It wasn't the clear version. It was the reddish version with a fierce sort of spice that made me slurp it all up in one long sip, then tiptoed to the giant pot in the kitchen to scoop seconds.

The star dish of the evening. Giant fish. Oven-baked with her special spice paste over it. Not spicy by our standards, but it was so delicious. She was fretting over the fish and checking on it every now and now. Bigger fish takes longer than 45 minutes to cook in the oven I suppose. Whatever she did, the end result was perfect. The banana leaves probably contributed to a seriously good ikan bakar. Moist, spicy, tangy and superbly fresh, the combination was a total win.

Big fish. So fresh.

There was dessert. I've no idea that grilled pineapples complement coconut ice-cream. A pity we couldn't get tubs of coconut flavors from Daily Scoop. The ladies like the shop's version of coconut. Apparently, the flavor is the best from Daily Scoop. But we had to make do with the 'coconut swirl' from Island Creamery. I like its pulot hitam quite a bit. The recipe hasn't changed, and it's not that sweet on the tongue. Didn't mind it tonight. Perfect ending. :)  But note to self, pulot hitam doesn't go well with grilled pineapple. Eeeeeeps.

I didn't even have to wash plates. The girlfriend took over the job. Muahahahahah. I came home with a very happy stomach. I've no idea where eveeleva learnt to cook like this. But I'm damn glad that she allowed me to eat her food. What a gorgeous invitation to dinner. Thank you. Absolutely precious.