What was the first real food you ever cooked?
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Mine was steamed rice. I grew up in Asia and so I am obligated to cook rice perfectly to avoid taunting from my very own mother, my father, their mothers and fathers, the spirit of their ancestors and all the neighbours who will drum the walls of their bamboo huts if there is someone in the neighbourhood who screwed up a pot of rice. If you are cooking rice there are 2 things to bear in mind: first, the rice must be cooked as fluffy as down pillows, second, the rice on the bottom of the pot which protects the entire congregation should never be burnt, it should be at most, of light brown colour.
I failed mighty miserably. I cooked my rice in high heat and with little water, a big no-no. The rice at the bottom of the pot was black, the rest decided to look like Weetbix. I murdered the rice, humiliated myself, and blasphemed my ancestors. My grandmother with all her gentleness and care just smiled and said, the entire hungry clan will just have to starve for another half an hour, we’re still mates, but she’ll have to cook it this time. I skipped brunch because I buried myself in a banana trunk.
I will not talk about Masterchef Australia (as of now) but if there is one thing that pulled you to the kitchen it was that show. You are not alone; the rest of Australia is cooking because of that show.
I think this is a wonderful time to start to learn to cook. People who started cooking twenty years ago will agree with me . The ever accessible internet has thousands of recipes. But wait there’s more… loads of them are free! Tell your financier to save money for a Tabletop instead of buying you cookbooks. Of course you can also load your smart phone with apps that can plan meals, tell you the nutritional value and write up a shopping list.
If you are not suffering from Mageirocophobia, cooking can bring a lot of good to you and the people around you. That is, of course, if you get it right and eventually manage to master cooking the rice.
Now let’s go back to the beginning and make fun of ourselves. What was the first food you ever cooked? Did you master it or murder it?
I find the website http://www.recipehound.com to be very useful for recipes from around the world and with its many different categories
mine was chicken macaroni salad, Filipino-style. there aren’t many things to mess up in this recipe, but i did manage to overcook the pasta.
i had my first experience in cooking here in Dubai and honestly it was a major fail. the squid that i had cooked were all rubbery and the sauce was too spicy for my liking.
I failed first time in cooking my first steamed rice. In my first tries, they came out as either uncooked or sooo soggy wet. The first food I ever cooked? It’s tomatoes sauteed with garlic and onions on a clay pot… good thing cause it became my base for all my favorite food like spaghetti sauce,fish and pakbet (a Filipino veggie favorite)
Mine was sago (tapioca pearls) because I love sweet sago on summer days as a child. Twas kid of cheating tho, coz the pearls were already half cooked by my mom. All i needed to do was cook it some more with sugar and water.:-)
the first food i ever cooked was tomatoes sauteed in garlic and onions on a clay pot. We were kids playing house. It tasted so good so we added vegetables (eggplants and string beans) and before we knew it we were eating “pakbet” a filipino veggie favorite.
My first attempt at Adobo was less than impressive. I remember my wife telling me to leave the soy sauce to near the end and add enough water at the beginning to cook for 40 mins.
I think it was so tart from the strong vinegar (I used spicy suka instead) and not much water, and I couldn’t help myself, I wanted to see the dark soy do it’s thing and put it in early making it very salty.
Now I’ve got Adobo down pat and I so a few versions.
Love it!
The first meal ever cooked was pizza, started making dinners in the teens and have not looked back and a great homemade pizza is still one of the favorites.
my first food i ever cooked was piniritong isda (fried fish).. but ive never made it so fried at my first try.. it was so messed up that i forgot to put the cooking oil first before the fish… lol… :p
@dan That was a very skeletal website. As I was saying there on the post, 20 years ago, getting a recipe means buying a cookbook, visiting a neighbor or a friend (with your recipe notebook) but that website is a very good example that you can cook any cuisine or dish, depending on what you feel, without popping a vein.
@lei I find myself not trusting the cooking time instructions in packages. My usual pasta is 12-15 minutes in a boiling pot and getting a piece to check if it is al dente before draining… or it would be the dinner down the drain.
@regina In my experience, washing the squid thoroughly before chucking it in the pan is a must, I learned that lesson the hard way. Also, if you cook the squid more than 5-10 minutes (depending on the thickness), it would either be as you said, rubbery or if you cook it even longer it may turn into a monster.
@gaye so how did your veggies in a clay pot turn out?
@Sheh Tapioca pearls! They are everywhere in Asia. I found only one stall here in Australia (or Melbourne, inside Chadstone Shopping Center), considering that there are a lot of Chinese food stalls here.
@Brendan Adobo is a lazy dish. You can chuck everything in, including soy sauce, even before you put the pot on the stove. The trick there is to let the sauce reduce until it becomes very thick that it can cover the back of a spoon. Or it may be a different version from your wife’s. Please do share your recipe here.
@Richard Did you make the dough yourself? Dates that include making Pizza is a winner.
It still seems surreal that I am talking about Food in a technology oriented blog. It’s like liking something in a strange way.
Mine too is rice. I even mastered cooking it in any way. Be it in a gas stove, rice cooker, charcoal or even in a makeshift stove using wood. Sadly, that is the only food I can say I can perfectly cook.
Thanks Siggy for making me look back to all those good old days. *Site bookmarked*
Mine was fried squid (calamari) with my dad, where I’ll put the flour /mix on the squid and he pops them on the deep fryer. Afterwards, he’ll watch me eat it all with ketchup and mayo.
It was MEATBALLS. My father was an amazing chef. I was in my last year of college and running here, there, and everywhere, when he literally stopped me and said, ” you know if you don’t stop now to learn how to make my meatballs, I’ll never tell you”. He got my attention. Right then and there, we rolled up our sleeves and got down to business.
p.s. He probably would have given it to me anyway.
Mine was custard – from a packet, in the microwave. I expected it to come out like those nice solid towers of custard you get in restaurants, so when it came out of the microwave after the prescribed time and was still runny, I put it back in thinking it needed longer. Eventually it completely exploded all over the inside of the microwave.
It was pouring custard.