This weekend’s cookout was a long awaited one. I had planned it for more than a month. It started with Ee Ching Wah telling me about his preaching engagement on July 24 (Ee is not exactly clergy. He runs a construction company and is also the executive director of an education concern. So in every sense of the word, he’s a layman preacher.) He also told me about his church congregating in one of the ballrooms in the Sri Damansara Club (which is only a stone’s throw away from where I live) for Sunday morning service. So … I thought, why not hear him preach in the morning (I’ve been wanting to hear him preach for a while now) and then proceed on to his house for the cookout in the afternoon - kill two birds with one stone-lah.

That was exactly what we (my wife, son and I) did.

Grocery shopping had to be done on Saturday (July 23). There was no way it could have been done on Sunday because all of us have to attend church, Chef Woo (remember him?) included. So Saturday it was. My son, Ryan, didn’t come along this time as he would have normally done (too busy watching cartoons on the telly). Chef Woo had to pop by his office to take care of some loose ends at work, so we postponed the originally intended shopping time of 10:30AM to 12 Noon. The destination: Bangsar Shopping Centre’s Cold Storage - the one-stop shop for grocery shopping when you are planning a Western menu. As we had to document the cookout for this write-up on the website, some photos had to be shot. But as usual, mid-way through the aisles (the same experience we had when we shopped at the Bangsar Village Grocer not too long ago), the guard at Cold Storage started cautioning us against taking pictures in the premise.

For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out the rationale. We were shooting pictures of what Chef Woo was picking up - the ingredients for the cookout. If at all, this write-up and the pictures accompanying it would have given Cold Storage some free publicity. So why the fuss? A supermarket is a supermarket. People go there to get their fresh produce, dairy supplies, cereals, cuts of meat, junk food, beverages, etc. The layout of any supermarket, if I’m not mistaken, is common sense and pretty ordinary. So, we were not exactly photographing top-secret stuff. But I guess, the supermarkets would not want their pictures to be used for “subversive” purposes. That would not be nice. So the precaution was probably to keep these activities at bay. Perhaps, for the next cookout, we will write in to seek the permission of the respective store managers to take pictures.

Anyway … grocery shopping we did. At 12 Noon, that is. The beauty about picking things up at the Cold Storage is: everything’s under one roof, yes … including the non-kosher stuff!

Sunday morning (July 24) was a lazy morning. The sky wasn’t exactly grey, but it wasn’t blue and all sunshine either. But I wasn’t about to complain to God about the weather. We went to the Sri Damansara Club; enjoyed the time of worship at the Sunday morning service and heard Ee preach. After a quick lunch, it was off to his house for the cookout. The sun was shining brightly by then … very hot, in fact.

I will leave the video (found at the bottom of this page) to do the talking from here, but suffice to say we had a great time. In Ee’s own words: “Dinner was superb, fellowship … first class.” But best of all, he asked: “Where can you have such a sumptuous meal - spreads you only dream about and see in cook books? And that too … right in your home in the company of family and friends, and clad in your T-shirt and shorts!”

Chef Woo’s Black Label lamb stew was a hit, especially with Ee and the other lamb lovers in the party. The roast chicken marinated with white wine and herbs was excellent as well. The salad topped with the chef’s special yoghurt dressing, pan-fried dory with special mushroom sauce and macaroni with Virginia ham-laced white sauce were equally heavenly. My son Ryan and Ee’s son Aeron, both finished half the portion of macaroni by themselves and innocently asked if there was more. Unfortunately there was not enough to go around.

The boys were so hoping that Chef Woo would whip up another portion, but by dinnertime, the chef was so close to exhaustion that an order like that would be bordering on cruelty to the cooking fraternity. So to satisfy their huge appetite, they were treated to Ee’s other half (Judy)’s dessert offerings - a really mouth-watering cheese trifle and equally irresistible pecan tartlets. The boys helped themselves to some generous portions!

Judy, an accomplished baker, was not able to show the making of the cheese trifle because it has to be chilled overnight, but catch her making the pecan tartlets.

The wonderful desserts were accompanied by excellent kahlúa coffee, courtesy of Ee’s daughter Alina, who was recently back from the U.K. for her summer holidays, some apples, oranges and ‘melt-in-your-mouth’ Pakistani mangoes. Judy’s twin sister Ruby and elder sister Lily, from Auckland, New Zealand, who was in KL on holiday, also shared the meal with us. That, folks … is the essence of The Weekend Chef - good food and good company (friends and family).

We parted company at about 10:00PM.

Ryan went to bed with a big smile on his face.