Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Jamie Oliver I am not

The thing about recipes is, when you need to double them or increase the portions, somehow the recipe doesn't work as well. Today we had potluck at veron's place, I contributed a spiced pork dish which had turned out excellent on the last occasion I made it. The first thing that should have alerted me to "something will go wrong today" is when the butcher mistook my "uncle, 1kg pork shoulder" as "1kg pork, 'shou-de'", which in chinese means 1kg lean pork. When in fact I wanted pork with a bit of fat which would make it good for stewing. 2nd thing that should have alerted me was when I cut the pork into cubes and realised, uh oh, they look too big and will take time to tenderize. But somehow I just ignored my inner wisdom and carried on. Needless to say I'm not too impressed with the final outcome, and I think, neither was anyone else, though folks were too polite to mention anything. Where's my culinary flair when I need it?? Sigh. By the way, cutting up 12 chillies, 16 shallots and 8 cloves of garlic to blend into belachan really left a sting on my left hand, it's been some 7hrs since i started the belachan prep and my hand still feels chilli-hot and numb. Whoa. Wonder how do the malays and indonesians actually do this day after day?

Exams on Sat, yawn. Not going too far with my reading, did I mention how reading 5 mins of the text puts me to la-la nirvana sheep counting land? No need for yoga therapy. Econs text is the ultimate sleep inducer.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

how do malays do it?.. well, just like your grannie does!!.. instead of cutting them up.. t hey use that poundng stone thingy with the round stone 'mallet'.. you know the 'tok tok tok' sound lah!!...

Ahh.. the typical woman cook.. you know what is the biggest mistake?????!!!.. Thats NOT tasting your dishes when you prepare them!! all good chefs do that.. i notice you don't!!...er.. giving samples to holly dun count as she eats anything!!...er.. remember your white bean soup??!!... (i will never let you live it down!!)

As for your econs... you should do what REAL muggers do.... DRINK LOTS OF COKE. COFFEE and eat CHOCS!! teh caffeine will keep you up! Trust me, tonight i have to do an all nighter.. so i have armed myself with kit kats and that jap chocs... no coke tho.. just 5 packets of SOYA bean from rochor tau huay !! a cows gotta do what a cows gotta do!!

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