Yesterday Ai Lin cooked up a really nice vegetable dish. Most days we experiment with food; rice, pasta, vietnamese rice noodles and vegetables. Some days we eat nice food and some days we eat edible food. Here's a run down on some surprises and accidents we've had so far in our quest to conjure culinary delights. (the author apologises for the lack of photographic evidence but maintains that some things are better left unseen)
Chinese Pasta
Ingredients
- packet of pasta and weevils
- brocolli
- boiled shrimp
- vinegar
- onions and garlic
After the first day that my parents left Ailin made lunch. Because there were weevils in the pasta package (always buy top-quality stuff for consumption, stinging on food will only cause heartache, potential bodily demise or discovering bugs in your package) we had to substitute with vietnamese rice noodles (bun). Tasted quite alright, a little more chinese than italian, a little too vinegar-y for my tastes, cause i don't like vinegar but pretty edible; we did finish the whole pot at least. Lesson learnt: Always buy Premium pasta.
Sweet porridge
Ingredients
- white rice and lots of water
- beef
- onions and garlic
- marinate
- carrots
- some boiled shrimp
I made this a few days after my parents left Hanoi. Feeling a little sick and having had the urge to eat something soupy and soft, In my fit of creativity i added in CARROTS. which by the way causes dishes to become sweet. Needless to say after spending an hour or so in the rice cooker together with the rest of the indgredient plus onions (which also makes things sweet) it became sweet porridge that had a peppery hot aftertaste (due to the beef marinate). Weird combination. Unfortunately the porridge only got eaten once by me, right after it got cooked, before i went for class at VNU after my landlord and his dashing friend came to fix the door that i broke (but, thats a story for another day. even so, lets date this event for future reference 28 Aug) Now, i am not an advocate of wasting food and nor did i mean to leave it decomposing in the rice cooker over the weekend but here's what happened ; I got "kidnapped" by my nice malaysian aunty whom I met at the mosque that day thinking that I had to be there just to pick up the frozen halal chickens that i ordered from her. At the time I couldn't fast so I thought I'd be back home in the evening to face my sweet porridge But she, insisted (and culturally one cannot decline) in me following her back for the night where I was treated to the nicest pillows and bed i have slept on in Hanoi in her superb home. I really did enjoy myself despite the unexpected turn of events and returned home the next evening laden with part of the frozen meat (because our freezer is too small) and yummy goodies hehe! As such, my porridge lay decomposing. Lesson learnt: No Carrots in the porridge
Rice-Porridge
Ingredients
- rice
- too much water
This time i really did intend to make proper rice but it ended up as porridge. That was sad. I ate one big bowl for my pre-dawn fasting meal and the rest lay decomposing over the week as I kept going to the mosque and getting wonderful yummy goodies (including properly cooked rice) to bring back and eat. Lesson learnt: One cup of water to One cup of rice.
Vegetable dish
Ingredients
- long beans (which were actually rather short)
- tomato (which waited 5 days in the fridge before getting 'processed')
- garlic
- oyster sauce and sesame oil
- secret weapon : dried sambal pedas ikan bilis with bawang mix (we swear, it makes everything taste good, so good you can eat it on its own +rice lah)
It went right.Superb dish. Yummy. Yes Ai Lin, I'll eat everything you make as long as its Halal Oh, and i managed to make proper fluffy bug-free white rice too haah. :)
Looks can be deceiving it was super yummy can! :)
So folks, It doesn't matter if at first you don't succeed and end up throwing away decomposed culinary experiments. Just as long as you learn your lessons and never give up.
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