Now I definitely don't consider myself a great cook. I'm okay and every so often I surprise myself with a newly tested recipe that actually turns out great. Although terrific at following instructions there are times when I just don't know if it's me or if it's really the recipe. I'm hoping it's the recipe.
Up until my mid-30s, I wouldn't have a bar of the kitchen. Most of my friends wondered why I built a house with a kitchen. I could have save thousands of dollars by just not having one. Of course, I was a prolific user of my kettle to support my coffee addiction and loved my microwave oven. That was the extent of my kitchen usage.
Then one day around 35ish, I got bored of waiting for my gorgeous hubby to finish his studies so I can hang with him and decided to hover around the kitchen in my new house. Nope not much bigger than my last one (somewhat surprising since the house was twice as big) but it had what it needed, even if the equipment were old. I have no idea what I cooked that day but I was satisfied with the experiment and the outcome. Satisfied enough to bring me back and curious enough to want to try something else.
Off I went experimenting with simple dishes, following instructions exactly, never veering off from a recipe. This way I knew if the cooked meal was a failure it had nothing to do with me being creative.
Now seven years on, I have been in the kitchen on and off with the last two years out more often than in. Cooking for me is like a hobby. I do it when I feel like it and then I usually go digging for a new recipe, with fingers crossed hoping it'll work out just fine. More often than not the dish turns out as expected but on the odd occasion I have the disappointing outcome where the food looks great but it lacks flavour or just doesn't quite measure up. Some dishes came out very well and find themselves on a revolving door, like the:
- chocolate brownies made from scratch or the blonde version made of loads of brown sugar that go straight to your hips;
- spicy pumpkin soup;
- cous cous salad;
- eye fillet steak with homemade fries, caramelised onions and steamed vegies (hubby is the chef on this one but it is so good, I won't go anywhere else for steak);
- bread and butter pudding with homemade plum reserve;
- pesto pasta that is so super quick I'm basically just waiting for the pasta to cook.
Probably the funniest experiment was trying to make cookies for the first time. I grabbed my special cookie book that I've had for years but never used and off I went with the basic cookie. The dough was mixed and fridged as instructed. It was rolled out as instructed but do you think I could cut the dough out and lift it off the bench to put it on the tray to bake. It was a fudgy mess and figured if the dough is non-compliant then I will roll it out and put the whole darn thing on a tray and see what happens.
Imagine a biscuit tray with one big piece of rolled out dough on it. I had this massive cookie that measured 20 x 25cm and baked it for the required 20 minutes. After taste testing a small section, I was surprised to find out it was darn good and it baked all the way through. Hubby liked it, the child liked it and I liked it. So I broke it into pieces and stored it in a container. It lasted all of 2 days.
My favorite pastime in the kitchen is making soup. Love the stuff. It's the European in me raised on soup as an entree every day. The spicy pumpkin soup, ribolitta an old Tuscan soup, lentil and vegies, german potato soup and many more that I will post along the way.
This blog is about me having fun in the kitchen experimenting, chronicling the good recipes and the disasters (hopefully not too many of them). Occasionally I may impart some information on an ingredient's health benefit or even describe those perplexing moments when I attempt to decipher a recipe that is not in English (you should see my grandmother's recipes in old measurements and in Hungarian which I certainly do not speak - may need to draw on my sister for translation) or is not in Australian English because the US or UK English differs in measurements and at times in ingredient description ie, cilantro for coriander, aubergine for eggplant, courgette for zucchini, strong flour for bread flour.
Anyway the journey should be fun, especially since I reside in Singapore and western ingredients are a little harder to find. I had to fly back to Australia at Christmas just to have a good ole' fashioned lamb roast with 3 vege. Meat is expensive here as it is all imported, but then so are many of the veggies (I paid $1.70 for 3 carrots, in Oz I'd be paying $1 for 8 carrots).
Join me on my quest for better cooking. Try the recipes out and tell me what you think. Certainly make suggestions for improvements, better yet give me a recipe to test.
Stay tuned as I reproduce some of the recipes from Silv's Journal blog and add the newbies as I go along.
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| My little helper. |
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