I realized I never blogged about our original visit to France in our Secret-Secret Geography Club.  This post will take us back to April 2009! I can't remember what a lot of things were or even what they tasted like, but I know my fellow Geography Clubbers will appreciate the throwback.

We began the evening sipping French wine and trying out different French cheeses.

We finally planned another Secret-Secret Geography Club Dinner! Eight months after Joel and Lindsey moved, we also finally asked a couple girls from our church (one's a chef and one's a die hard baker and cook) to add to our ranks. After much deliberation the six of us decided to visit France for our culinary travels. We had already done French food with Joel and Lindsey, but since it's such a vast and rich cuisine we knew that there was so much more to explore.

We had it all planned out:
I was going to do the appetizer with some Oeufs en Cocotte.
Lacey was going to bring some French wine as well as Coq au Vin.
Dan and Lisa were bringing duck and a terrine.
And Bailey had dessert covered with a croquembouche as well as macarons.

A feast of French cuisine!  The day of our dinner I started to think maybe we needed a salad as well and so I started researching and thinking I'd do a traditional Nicoise Salad, but then Steve stopped me and said "Kin think of how much food everyone is bringing!  We have enough."  So I backed off and stuck to the plan.

But by early afternoon Bailey delivered the bad news that she had gone to the doctor for a sore throat and he thought she had mono.  She would have to stay home (and eat all the profiteroles and macarons herself).  So disappointing!  But I guess we still had a bunch of food to eat and could make it through without dessert.

By 5pm Lacey called to say she had to work late that day at the restaurant, forgot to thaw her chicken, she hadn't started cooking her dish yet and Bailey was her ride out to our place, so she was cancelling too! Steve refused to let her back out and said we didn't care about the food, we just wanted her company.  In the end Lacey made it and came bearing two bottles of French wine and some French cheese.  All was well!

Our rocky start quickly mended when Dan and Lisa served their Roasted Vegetable Terrine with fresh herbs and goat cheese.

Ah...the RETURN of the Secret-Secret Geography Club.  It's been more than six months since we've gathered together as a group to make International cuisine, and a year and a half since I last blogged about one of our meals.   After three years as a group and over 20 different countries and cuisines I think we lost steam.  It also didn't help that one third of our group moved away.  Punks.

But Lisa had the brilliant idea to plan a SECRET Secret-Secret Reunion for Dan's 35th birthday.  Joel and Lindsey drove two hours to surprise him and be here with us.

Dan was blindfolded and the smells wafted from my kitchen as he walked in the door and we all yelled "Surprise!"  We were all together again and in the business of making and eating incredible International food.  Our theme:  The Best of Asian Cuisine.  We took all the best dishes from the Asian countries we visited and recreated them.  It was a perfect theme since Dan's favourite countries were always the Asian ones, and we had so many mouth-watering recipes to revisit and walk us down memory lane.

I made a Korean vegetable and rice dish that Lindsey originally made called Bipimbap (beep-im-bap).  The veggies are all sauteed individually with soy sauce, sesame oil and a bit of fish sauce and then arranged beautifully on top of a bowl of rice with a heaping spoonful of gochujang (a Korean red pepper paste).  My husband is a hot sauce addict so I just happened to have some of this stuff in my fridge.


Dan and Steve have been bugging me for months to make this Beef Rendang from our Malaysian night again.  The depth of flavours in this dish are insane, with warm hits of star anise, cinnamon, cardamom and cloves and rich coconut milk.  The dish is spicy and sweet, warm and rich.  It takes over three hours to make, but both Steve and I decided it's utterly worth it.  This dish needs to be made in this house over and over again.  Waiting two years to eat it again is unacceptable.

While adding my star anise and cinnamon sticks, I smiled as I reminisced the very beginning of this group when we forged ahead in the unfamiliar territory of Moroccan cuisine and I hated it because of the cinnamon and licorice flavours in my savoury foods.  Every country we'd visit, I would turn up my nose when someone put cinnamon or licorice in the food and yet I'd always be pleasantly surprised.  My taste buds have really changed and expanded since starting this group and I owe it to fellow Geography Club members and their amazing cooking skills.


Lindsey brought her scrumptious Chinese Pork Buns again and I was in heaven. This time she brushed the tops of them with honey before baking, giving them a lovely sweetness.  Fresh bread dough wrapped around spiced pork is a wonderful thing.


Lindsey also brought us a lovely Thai salad made of pomello's, cucumber, carrots, mint, peanuts and a dressing of fish sauce, chili's, lime and sugar.  Pomello's are an Asian cousin to a grapefruit but are much sweeter.  Lindsey got hers nice and fresh at the Asian Supermarket in her new city, which is much MUCH bigger than our little Asian market.


The first time Lindsey made this salad it also had shrimp in it, which sounds weird but was oh so good.


We also got to indulge in a beautiful little Asian fruit I had never tried before called mangosteen.  The outside flesh was a gorgeous purple colour.  Lindsey found some beautiful mangosteens at her Asian Supermarket and brought them for us to try after our meal.


She also showed us the proper way to open a mangosteen.  Place the green top in the palm of your hand and the bottom in the palm of your other hand.



Push the palms of your hands together until the aubergine rind splits to reveal brilliant fuschia innards.


The part of the mangosteen you actually eat is the white bulbs inside that look like garlic.



I can assure you it tastes nothing like garlic, but a sweet mix of strawberry and kiwi flavours wrapped up with warm vanilla tones.


It was a wonderful treat to break open our own mangosteens and each try one.




Lisa brought us some Asian inspired Lime and Mangosteen coolers to enjoy with our meal and later we sipped on some Japanese Plum wine and ate some salted dark chocolate that had chilies and pop rocks in it that they found in the states.  The chocolate had nothing to do with our Asian theme, but was delicious and so fun to try nonetheless.

We couldn't have a best of Asian food meal and not have Lisa make hotteok (ho-duck) for dessert.  Freshly fried yeast dough with brown sugar, peanuts and black sesame seeds sandwiched in the middle.  All of us love to talk about this delicious morsel and reminisce.  They were just as incredible as we remembered.

I've really been slacking on blog posts lately, including our Secret-Secret Geography Club dinners. I finally wrote about our night of delicious Thai food at Meal Planning 1o1 if you want to read it. I also have our French night from April in the drafts waiting to be blogged.

Oh well, one of these days.

On Sunday our Secret-Secret Geography Club got together for some Malaysian fare. We wanted to do a country that was really quite foreign to us, so we had to research recipes and use ingredients we weren't familiar with. I was really looking forward to trying food that was totally different.

Our group delivered the delicious goods as usual. Lindsey brought a Malaysian Spicy Fruit Salad called Rojak. It was a combination of cucumber, pineapple, jicama, mango, and green apple tossed with a dressing of chili, sugar, lime juice and shrimp paste. But after Lindsey opened the jar of shrimp paste and smelled it, she decided to skip out on it. It's REALLY strong smelling and I can understand why she would shy away....kinda almost like fishy dog food. But stronger. Anyways, the whole mixture was topped with ground peanuts and black sesame seeds. It was really interesting. The combination of spicy, sweet and sour seemed to really work. It was refreshing.




Lindsey also brought a dish of chilied eggs. Yes, I know it looks weird. There was just no salvaging the look of it for the picture. It's essentially eggs in a chili-coconut sauce. The eggs were first hard-boiled, then fried, then simmered in the coconut sauce. This one was just a little too weird for me. I think everyone felt the same.

I made Beef Rendang from Rasa Malaysia's website. It was a long process that took about 2.5 hours to prepare but sooooooo worth it! I loved the flavors of the chili's, lemongrass, ginger, garlic, and coconut combined with the warm spicy star anise, cinnamon and cloves. I hate to say it, but I think I'm really starting to like anise and cinnamon in savory dishes...if it's done right of course. After frying a homemade spice paste the beef, coconut milk, toasted coconut and more spices were added and then simmered and stewed. You let the mixture stew until all the liquid is gone and by the end the pieces of beef are being fried. At the end of the 2-3 hour process all the spices and flavorings have combined to create this amazing earthy, spicy beef that is just incredible. Steve thought it was possibly the best thing I have ever cooked. Now that's a compliment!


Dan also purchased some shrimp paste, but he actually ended up cooking with it. It went into these spicy long beans. After smelling the shrimp paste and the odor filled the room as Dan cooked with it, my stomach was turning thinking about eating these beans. But just like fish sauce can be potent and you would never eat on it's own, when you cook with it in small portions it adds great flavor. So shrimp paste and all, these beans were good. Like...really good.


It seemed we couldn't have Malaysian food without Malaysian satays. Dan made these and they were incredibly delicious. They tasted just like the satays I made with a recipe again from Rasa Malaysia. Everyone was fighting over the last few skewers.

Can't have satays without homemade peanut sauce.

I think we all loved our Malaysian feast and all the unexpected flavors. The last couple months have been filled with countries we love like India, China and Mexico, but they were all very familiar dishes. Besides the skewers, I had never tried any of these dishes before. New, exciting and delicious.

The next country we are going to explore is the culinary delights of France. That means fresh spring vegetables, butter, cream, pastry, cheese and copious amounts of wine.

I can hardly wait.