Food For Thought

I grew up watching Yan Can Cook, so can you. The over-enthusiastic crowd when Chef Yan chops up veggies at blender speed, & how delicious he describes his dishes that you cna smell it from the TV. My mum often spent her afternoon leisure time ironing clothes & watching Fang Tai's cooking show. The all-familiar common household dishes left me drooling when I watched the show with her after school.

However, no one made me wanted to try cooking more than this easy-going home chef. I was channel surfing one boring afternoon & there was this young boy cooking up a storm in his own personal kitchen. There was no audience, no fixed camera angles or elaborate stage setup with sponsored kitchen appliances. Haha, it just attracted me at that very instant. I have never seen cooking on screen so closely mimmicking real-life kitchen work. He is the one that you wish came with your kitchen renovation package, preferably permanently fixed in.

Mum commented that his ways of cooking are unhygenic; basically he prefers using his bare hands than tablespoons or scissors or any other utensils. He plucks a few rosemary leaves, squishes them, throws them in the mixture, & blends with his hands. Then he stuffes the mixture into whatever meat with his hands. Everything is handmade. No precise spatulas, tablespoons or weighing scales here. A bit of olive oil (& he douses a huge generous portion), a pinch of salt (a tiny handful)... experience & on-the-spot tasting takes over the recipe. & that is exactly the way I want my dishes to be. Done to my perfection, not the recipe's.

& so finally, i have seen the opportunity to try his dishes, & i went out sourcing for the ingredients just now. Just like his cooking shows, I'm inviting my friends over for a small gathering, of fun & mahjong. He cooks up 3 dishes for them, but I think I'll just stick with 1 main dish. A dish that doesn't require any oven baking (I need to get one!), & that is sure hard to find. It was a surprise to find a basic pasta making recipe in his book.But then again, he practically makes everything. Bread, pasta, sauces... all homemade. That is a skill I'll definitely want to learn. Finally you'll know what actually goes into your stomach, excluding all the preservatives & flavourings. Homemade pasta! I'm getting all excited about that. I can imagine the day when I actually make all the food that I eat. Haha! Bake your own bread, prepare your own tomato sauce & pasta, & even grow your own spices! How else to satisfy a gourmet king, who has roamed from East (Changi Village) to West (Tuas) for divine food satisfaction?

Homemade recipes are actually much more expensive than ready-to-use ingredients. Many factory produce are cheap because they use raw ingredients in bulk & of a lower grade of quality, those that did not make it for individual packaging & subsequently end up on supermarket shelves. They also have preservatives added for a longer shelf life. However, nothing beats homemade, where you decide exactly what you want to eat. Customise your own pasta, & choose only the best ingredients. You buy the ingredients fresh from the market the week you cook your dishes, & you eat it the same day you cook it. Sounds like the freshest idea. The closest I can get now, at least, until I can really get to live in Switzerland & be self-sustained. & drink milk immediately after it's milked from the cow. Anyways, then that would be the cheapest option, because it's free! It's your own labour for your own food. Right now, it's close to 40 bucks for a homemade meal of pasta with tomato sauce for 4. Yes, the tomato sauce is also homemade.

I can already imagine myself cooking up a storm in the university boarding house, & holding a mini food tasting party in the pantry. Heh. Pasta would be the main course (unless I get to borrow the canteen uncle's oven), though I would really like to try one of those baked chicken (or bacon or any other meat) with veggie in a bag. He just stuffes everything in a sealed aluminium foil bag, pops into the oven, & half hour later comes out steaming, extremely juicy & so bursting of flavour.

Of course, I wasn't popping champagne with roast chicken or anything. I just came home to find my dinner still on the stove. Mum cooked some mixed veggie in a pot. I just warmed it up, took the veggie out, & used the leftover juice to cook a packet of instant noodles. I added minimal water to the veggie stock, a bit more than half of the packet of seasoning & cooked the noodles until almost all the water has evaporated. I didn't want a bowl of noodles with lots of stock soup because that would be too full. In exchange I got a bowl of concentrated flavour-blasted noodles. Just hope this doesn't happen on my homemade pasta tomorrow.

For anyone who is already salivating by now, I found a much detailed & informative guide, good for beginners like me, on basic pasta making. Happy kneading.