Scent of Chives, Chocolate and Tea

For all the fancy restaurants and celebrity chefs in the world, nothing creates a natural high more easily than a homemade group meal.

Thus it was on a cold Sunday night that while we were still talking about the Vogue Produce Awards dinner at Circa, The Prince (where we sat with rich gourmets and felt seriously inadequate on the monetary front), notable more for the copious amount of wine and discovering just how 'out there' our table companions were than for the offerings of Paul Wilson (he of Botanical fame, now looking at opening his own establishment) & Matt Wilkinson, we were also checking whether the eggs and sugar had been creamed to "pale and thick" as dictated by the Donna Hay recipe for moist chocolate cake. I also taught JJ and Nut a short cut to the "chopped chocolate" requirement:

• Grab your bars of chocolate in its packaging. Ensure you have the correct amount as required by the recipe.
  
• Pulverise your chocolate. Vent all your stress on it. Slam and hit the chocolate against every conceivable hard surface you can find. Chairs, tables, brick walls, karate style palm slams. No accompanying shrieking or screaming needed unless you want to re-enact a B-grade kung fu film.
  
• When you are done, open the packaging to turn the chocolate out on the chopping board. Chop chocolates to required size if not already done by the pulverising process.

This process should not only help to lower your blood pressure and give you an arm work-out, but also reduce your chopping effort.

In the kitchen, JJ and Shi were rolling out fresh dough to turn into dumpling skins and filling them with the traditional mixture of marinated pork mince, chives and spring onions. The scent of sesame oil and chives, so familiar and so endearing to all in the room. When Nut, YW and I attempted to help out with rolling the dumpling skins, we had a taste of the gap between us "amateur cooks" and the "experts" i.e. JJ and SL who had watched the women of their families do this sort of cooking their whole lives. Our pace alone made us stand out like burnt toast in a stainless steel kitchen. Finally, we sensibly decided to avoid causing wrath akin to Gordon Ramsay in the kitchen (which we had a taste of for about three minutes) and went back to watching Masterchef.

We forgot to keep track of the dumplings we devoured. We all agreed that the homemade dumpling skins were much better than store bought ones. We agreed that the dumplings were absolutely the right thing to have on a cold winter night.

Without alcohol there is chocolate. Baked for Nut to make a birthday wish on even though she actually has no real interest in cakes, the cake was ready to be served after several reminders of "do not open the oven before it is time". The birthday song was sung in three languages, as you would given the diversity of those present. The wish was made, the first cut carefully made into the cake with a vegetable cleaver. We agreed that the lychee black tea went well with the cake, but the Twining Organic Earl Grey was an even better match. We discussed birthday cakes, and whether a chestnut cake was feasible for JJ & R's birthday dinner. We boiled more water for more tea, and YW held an impromptu cabaret concert (acapella style, no less) as we maniacally printed lyrics off the Net on R's computer. The night ended with us doing tongue twisters before I finally got onto my tram, watching them stroll off arm-in-arm for a post-dinner winter walk.

Shared effort, a lot of humour, a lot of fun. For all the expensive establishments and award-winning chefs in the world, nothing really beats a home-cooked meal with family and/or friends.