Birthday lunch

Amra offered to make Prem and I a special cake for our birthday. I guess a pay back for the steak cake she had requested from me for her birthday back in September.

You can't just eat cake so I organised a simple little lunch for the family. I was solely incharge of making gozleme.

The recipe I used is here. Along with the spinach and feta version shown, I also made a spiced minced meat version for the non-vegetarians. I could have sworn I took photos of the dough process but when I went to upload the camera, they weren't there. Anyhow it's not biggy, here are some of the meat cooking process instead.

One diced onion, 4 cloves garlic, 500g minced meat, 1 tablespoon cumin, 1 tablespoon mixed spices, 1 tablespoon cajun spice, 1 tablespoon paprika (possibly a bit more), about 100ml tomato puree

Heat pan with oil and throw in the onion. Cook for about 1min and add the garlic and mince together (to avoid the garlic from burning). Toss the meat well and cook till most of the pink is gone and then add all the spices. Toss well again allowing spices to heat up and release it's aroma/flavour. Add the tomato puree and stir. Add extra water if you find the meat too dry (or possible even stock if you want extra flavour). Set the meat aside to cool or until you are ready to put the gozleme together.

Roll out the dough (as instructed in the recipe).

Preheat the bbq plate and make sure it's well oiled.

Lay the dough out onto the bbq plate and spread the meat/feta/spinach (whatever combo you would like) on half of the rectangle dough. Fold dough over to enclose filling and cook for 2-3mins. Flip it over and cook for a further 2-3mins.

Note - the photo is terrible, but trust me this gozleme is really good.

Other wonderful nibbles available for lunch:

Chhay made a lovely cheese and spinach dip and used a cob loaf to serve it in!

The grill vegetable salad I always make (this version had pumpkin, sweet potato eggplant, zucchini, tomatoes and mixed greens)


Sandwiches made with the help of my mother-in-law - sliced roast turkey, rocket and cranberry sauce

Also from my mother-in-law - tuna, mayo and lettuce

She also made some delicious egg, mayo and sprouts sandwiches which I failed to photograph.

The sandwiches were so good they were all eaten.

Irene made these yummy chocolate ganache macarons

And Amra's cake - a beautiful chocolate cake decorated with fresh blueberries, strawberries and chocolate biscuit logs. YUM!!! She attempted to use fondant and shape some puppies but it was such a scorcher of a day (from memory it was close to 40 degrees) that the fondant kept melting and was not manageable. So she had to abandon her cake idea and rush off to woolies to pick up some fresh fruit to re-decorate the cake. Thanks Chhay for baking this scrumptious cake and thank you to Amra for trying to make a puppy decorated cake. There's always next year ; )

And thanks to my family for coming over and celebrating our birthday!!!

A special belated birthday message to my dear friend and best bud Prem (who shares the same birth day as me - it would make sense we are best friends!) Love you and thank you for everything!