Scenes from a Married Life: My cooking

When I first met Dear Hubby 7 1/2 years ago,  I couldn't cook.  He managed to teach me how to cook simple meals before we got married two years later... what an achievement!  I've managed to turn myself into a half-decent cook since... with many culinary disasters along the way....

Last weekend, I made him some siew yoke.  What is a siew yoke?  It's Chinese roasted belly pork.  So simple but oh so delicious.  You can google the web for various recipes but it's mainly just pork belly with salt and Chinese five spice powder rubbed on.  Then it gets roasted to crispy perfection.  Yummy.

Dear Hubby adores siew yoke.  So I make some every now and then for a treat.  Then we fight each other to the death for it.

Last week, I made him some as a surprise treat.  He hadn't had any for quite a while and I knew he would enjoy it.

And my efforts were well rewarded because after eating one entire slab of meat all by himself ("What, SHARE with you, wife???"), he sighed happily and said, "That is the BEST pork I have ever tasted in my whole life.  E-ver."

That was a compliment of the highest order from my husband because that actually meant my siew yoke had shoved his beloved bacon into 2nd place and I felt so happy and proud of myself.

Not bad eh!

A super sambal recipe

When you're miles away from home, sometimes all you want is a taste of it.  My husband longed for proper sausages and pork pies when we were living in Asia.  Similarly I find myself dreaming of the food of my homeland now that I'm here in Scotland.  I think of nasi lemak, lontong, char kuey teow... all the delicious smells of my country! - and I think of home.  I'm Malaysian.  All we think about is food.

For those of you faraway Malaysians looking for a super-easy, super-delicious sambal recipe, try this one here called "My Amah's Sambal Udang Petai".   This is the recipe I used when I made nasi lemak a week ago.  I can vouch for its authenticity and sheer syiok-ness.  I didn't have petai on hand when I made it so I just left it out.  I also didn't remove the seeds from the dried chillies as I didn't have time so it was like yowza! spicy.  To tone it down, I added in some brown sugar... I like my sambal  on the sweetish side anyway, just like how my mum makes it.

Just a warning:  My entire house smelled of belacan after that and I had to open all the doors and windows to try and air it out.  So be careful if you live with angmoh housemates/partners who aren't used to the smell of belacan.  Some foreigners find the smell quite objectionable.   I had to go pick Connor up from school after I'd cooked the sambal  and I was careful to stay away from the usual pack of parents because I didn't want everyone to faint as I knew I had to be smelling of belacan.

Happy cooking!

Kids' Activities At Home: Baking cookies

Now that Connor is old enough to help in the kitchen without causing a fire, I am teaching him to prepare meals.  I want him to learn how to fend for himself and cooking is a skill that falls into that category.  I want him to learn that food doesn't just magically appear on a dinner table.  I want him to learn that preparing a meal for himself and his loved ones isn't just a valuable life skill, it's also something that can bring a lot of pleasure.   

As stir-frying is still out of the question, I mostly let him help only when it comes to baking.  He's very good (and very excited) at cracking eggs.  Each time he cracks one successfully, he cackles with joy.  

This is a super-duper easy basic biscuit dough recipe I found on the BBC Good Food site.  It has only FOUR ingredients.  Easy or what.  Can't mess it up.  Perfect for baking with kids. (Er... I still managed to screw it up.  The recipe calls for an egg yolk.  But I let Connor crack in an entire egg instead.  It didn't ruin the cookies though!)

We've made this twice now and it's really, really delicious.  I usually add chocolate chips and that's about as complicated as it gets.  The dough gets very sticky so it's no good for cutting out with our cute animal cookie cutters.  Just shape it into a log, chill it in the fridge for it to firm up and then slice into rounds.  Either that or drop spoonfuls of it onto the baking sheet.  

One thing about baking with or without kids is that it can get quite messy.  This is how I minimise the mess:

1.  I fill up a washing bowl/basin halfway with hot water and squeeze in dishwashing liquid.  Then I dump in used utensils and bowls as I go along.  By the time I'm done mixing and the cookies are baking away, the utensils have soaked for a little while and so are easier to wash.

2.  I mist some newspapers and lay them out on the work surface before I start measuring stuff out.  This way, when I spill flour, it stays put and my son isn't tempted to blow them away.

One part that Connor finds very hard to understand is why we have to wait for soooooo long before the cookies are ready to eat.  He'll hop about impatiently until the cookies are done.  Fortunately, they take only about 15 min or so but I'm sure it feels like an eternity to my son.

This recipe makes about 30 pieces of cookies.  And you can freeze the dough.  After everything's all mixed, all you have to do is shape them into logs and wrap them in cling film before freezing them.  I normally shape mine into logs of about 8 inches long, that yields something like 6-7 cookies.  Defrost before you want to bake them and just slice them into rounds before popping into oven.  Don't ask me how long they can last in the freezer as these cookies never last beyond a week before they disappear down our tummies.

Connor was very proud of his efforts.  It so happened Dear Hubby called home just as we had finished mixing everything and Connor shouted excitedly over the phone, "Daddy, I'm making cookies! I mix everything and now I have cookies!"

Yummy.

The idiot cook in me comes out of hiding... at last!

Well. It had to happen sooner or later.

This afternoon while Dear Hubby was busy cheering on Lewis Hamilton in the Shanghai GP, I snoozed on our lounger. I can sleep through anything and I can sleep anywhere and I'm really hoping our baby boy will have my sleeping prowess. When I woke up, I kept still for a very long time as I realised that I had a backache as well as those familiar pre-labour contractions. I've read up on signs of labour and one of them was persistent lower back pain combined with a crampy premenstrual feeling. That was precisely what I was feeling.

When I got up, Dear Hubby saw the odd look on my face and asked, "What's wrong?" I told him what I was feeling and said it was one of the signs I was supposed to look out for. I decided to try and see if I could shake off the back pain. If I couldn't, then I would start timing my contractions to see if it was the real thing. If it wasn't proper contractions, then I would just wait for the real thing to start.

Distracted by thoughts of labour, I waddled into the kitchen to start dinner. My oven is notoriously temperamental and I've learnt that it's best to start roasting my chicken by 4pm if I'm to want it nice and ready for dinner by 630pm. I always make a roast thingy on Sunday with roast potatoes, just the way Dear Hubby's English tastebuds like it. I like it too!

All my thoughts were on our baby as I started washing and rinsing out the chicken in an absent-minded way. As I tried to rinse out the cavity, I couldn't help thinking that it was REALLY difficult to get the cavity open. Maybe the chicken hadn't fully defrosted, I thought. Craps. Now I'll have to wait a bit longer before I can roast my chicken. But the rest of the chicken had fully defrosted and I just couldn't figure out why only the bum of the chicken was not.

After a while, I looked down more carefully at the chicken and thought, "Hey... how come there's this stick thing in the cavity? What an odd chicken!" I took a closer look at the chicken and for the first time since I started washing it, I focused on the chicken instead of on our soon-to-be-born son and I suddenly realised what I'd been doing.

I'd been holding the chicken.... upside down. No wonder the "bum" was so tight and I couldn't get my fingers in. I'd been trying to poke my fingers down a little space between the chicken's neck (the stick thing) and breast.

I *am* a complete loon. Sigh. I can't wait for the baby to be born and for me to get my brains back.

My culinary adventures continue - I cook my first curry from scratch!

As Dear Hubby enjoys his curries, I thought it was about time to cook a curry from scratch. Curry is a regular feature for dinner but we usually buy those ready-mix curry sachets because it saves time. Since I now have time on my hands, I thought it would be fun to try and cook it from scratch.

I found a fabulous recipe on the Canadian Living website for a chicken and vegetable curry. Canadian Living is a magazine that I first encountered during our holidays in Canada earlier this year. I loved it, it's a home and family magazine with idiot-proof recipes that taste absolutely fabulous and makes you look like a total pro. So naturally, when I wanted a curry recipe, I turned to their website for help.

It actually took me a week to collect all the various spices required for the curry. Trust me to pick the one week in Jakarta when most supermarkets had run out of ground cumin! The list of ingredients was a mile long and really looked intimidating but trust me, the curry was actually quite simple to cook.

So last night, I gathered all my pots and pans, prepared all my spices and got to work. I paired the curry with a pilau rice recipe from Jamie Oliver that I found in a magazine. Dear Hubby looked very wary when he entered the kitchen to pour himself his 2nd gin and tonic because my overly ambitious experiments usually never turn out right. He looked even more suspicious when he saw the pot of curry contained many things he'd never seen in his curries before such as cinnamon sticks and bay leaves. I explained to him, "Dear... I'm sure they pick all that out before they serve you the curry at our regular Indian restaurant!"

When dinner was served, Dear Hubby gingerly took a bite and... well, it's hard to explain but if you've watched Ratatouille, you'll remember that scene towards the end of the movie where that awful food critic took a spoonful of his ratatouille and his eyes just popped open with surprised pleasure as all his childhood memories came rushing back... and Dear Hubby's face had a similar sort of expression. The curry was delicious! It certainly had a much more complex taste to it when compared to the ready mixes and luckily for me, I'd judged the spicy level of the curry just right so it didn't burn up Dear Hubby's tongue.

Boy, was I delighted. And relieved! After the Spaghetti Carbonara incident, I couldn't afford another disastrous kitchen experiment. I beamed with pride and pleasure as I watched him enjoy the curry, all that slaving over a hot stove was pretty worth it.

I'm posting this because if an idiot cook like me can make that curry happen, anyone can. So check out the recipe, try it out and have fun doing it!