My Longkang

Cooking for the novice cook

“Daddy, I am hungry. Mummy has gone out,” Benghui said. What is any decent father to do except to prepare some food. Miss Cool, Calm and Collected has not been so cool since her university transcripts went missing: supposedly someone had taken it for her and neglected to inform her. Hence she was flustered and rushed out to look for it.

“Poor hungry Bengbeng and Benghui”, I grumped to myself

Hence I had to cook something, anything. I am no gourmet chef as you all probably know by now. But I was hungry too. The kid too had been bugging me the whole day so I thought it would be a good idea to initiate some cooking activity with him. I made it into some kind of game.

The kid cooked the green bean soup. Basically I taught him to wash the green beans. Put in water and a little sugar to taste. Put in micro-wave for twenty five minutes. He was very proud of the result.

While waiting for the green beans to cook, I taught him to wash the rice and add in water at the rate of 1.5 times the rice. That was the tricky part to a small kid. I accomplished it somehow with the help of concrete teaching aids. I marked a cup at the half-way-point.

All he had to do was turn on the rice cooker and open the cover after fifteen minutes of cooking. For my old rice-cooker, water tends to overflow out of the rice-cooker.

The following is what I used in my cooking.

The seasoning I used

The ingredients

I had to cook using this whatucallit coz my friend gave me some.

This is what I cooked.

Black pomfret or ikan bawal hitam in tomato sauce.

Make slits along the sides of fish and rub in some salt and pepper. Fry until it is ready to be eaten. Remove from the wok.

For the gravy, fry some chopped garlic and onion rings. Chillies can also be used.
Add some water,one tomato, two tablespoons of tomato sauce, some salt according to taste. Pour it over the fish.

Stir-fried vegetables.

Stir fry anchovies or ikan bilis and chopped garlic in oil. Add some salt. When the pleasant smell of garlic surfaces add vegetables and stir fry. The stems should be stir-fried first. The leaves later. I used a little of whatucallit too simply because I had some left over.

Whatucallit with chicken soup.

This tasted wonderful. Remember to use boiling water otherwise the soup will appear murky. I added boiling water into a pot, added chicken pieces and microwaved for 15 minutes. I removed from micro and added in the watucallit and some salt and pepper.

If you want to add garlic or onions please do not chop it as kids do not like to see foreign matter in soups. Just crush the garlic and for the onion put in half an onion ( whole ). Micro for another ten minutes. Remove garlic and onions. Ready to be served Bengbeng chicken watucallit soup.

Scrambled eggs.
This is the simplest. Beat a few eggs, add some salt and fry it.

I am pleasantly surprised by the results. Hope my little venture into this field doesn’t make you all double with laughter. Photography was no easy matter too. When I saw all those pics on the net, I assumed it was easy. It was not.

If you have no cooking experience, this is the perfect meal for you to try  Happy experimenting. If Bengbeng and Benghui can do it, anyone can.

Bless my wife and my mother. They made it all seem so easy. It wasn’t easy.