Cook for your family by Faking It.

When I was living in Australia, I am the epitome of a perfect girlfriend. I’ll play with you, converse intelligently with you, clean AND cook for you. Little did he know, I was FAKING IT. Or at least, the cooking part.

I pulled up this old post because of the good effort, #CookforFamily, initiative started by Daniel, a renown food blogger and Radio 1003 DJ.

When you study overseas, you will soon realize that boys come knocking on your door not because they want to ask you out, but because they smell FOOD. Like vampire drawn to blood, like dogs drawn to bells, cats to laser pointers and women drawn to cash.

The Asian food store in Australia was my favourite place to check out, especially when you are missing home. I will visit the one closest to my house in Kardinya (affectionately Kardy) for a quick fix. With narrow shelves, you feel like a bull in a china shop. I will always buy a packet of cigarettes from DFS whenever I depart Singapore for SGD 10 and sell it to this Asian mart for AUD 40. It was certainly a quick buck made for a student; a rapport was built between the Uncle and me. ‘Twas was how the Asian community unite. When pay day arrives (from my café jobs), I will drive out to CanningVale market or Northbridge in the city where there is more variety.

Knowing a few tricks to fake home cooked meals, it comes in handy to win favour with those housemates, boosts your popularity and perhaps even a marriage proposal in tow.

After all, the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.

Here’re my Top 5 kitchen secrets:

Lee Kum Kee Freshly Minced Garlic



Garlic forms the base of any Asian dish, or any dish for that matter. I’ve always used fresh garlic until I spot this in the shared fridge and stole some to try.

Boy, did it make the dish smell exceptionally good. However, Lee Kum Kee don’t come cheap ($3.90) and for a garlic lover like me, I will finish the small jar very quickly. To control usage, I become a garlic cheat when I am cooking for someone I want to impress. When I am cooking for friends or myself, I chop up garlic like Cinderella.

Needing nothing else, you whip up restaurant standard vegetables like this. Looking at the ingredients, this is one kitchen secret that is closest to its natural state without preservatives, chemicals and unprocessed.

Tip: Vegetables never need more than 2-3 minutes of wok stirring. 

The longer you cook them, the less nutrients it retains.

 Lee Kum Kee Chinese Barbeque Sauce

Ideally used for pork ribs, I found that baking chicken wings glazed with this char siew sauce was a real treat! This is perfect for the laziest of all laziest fake chefs. I make this dish sparingly because of its sugar and colouring (how else does the red come from?)

Seah’s Emperor Herbs Chicken Spices

Potluck happens a lot among students when living overseas because it’s difficult to cook for one. So everyone brings a dish to the table but when you are a student, you also pinch pennies.

Some cheapskate but greedy Singaporeans (usually the boys) will cook and bring a vegetable dish. You may think you’re generous by buying a huge bunch of kangkong, but when you cook it, it shrinks and it looks very measly on a huge plate.

Seah makes you and your chicken look good.

Tip: Remove the chicken skin so it will be less oily.

You smear the powder onto the washed chicken, throw in some wolfberries to make it as if you did it yourself, put into a huge wok with water below and steam. Remember to add water with the chicken to have soup to go! For only $1.90, you can buy the sachet that comes complete with the spiced powder, aluminum foil and plastic sheet.

The Singaporean students were so cheapskate that one potluck was themed VEGETARIAN party. So it was fair that everyone brought the cheapest dish possible to the table.

The rebel that I am, I brought a whole chicken. Everyone was impressed and the boys felt indebted to me for feeding them meat.

 Vermont Curry- a touch of apple & honey

Knowing that I cook a lot in Australia, my mum brought this when she visited. Made in Japan, it is like hardened Macdonald’s curry for nuggets. It is portioned into squares; you just throw the cube into boiling water to dissolve. This should be added last after you have cooked the chicken, carrots and potatoes. 

Pile on top of fragrant fluffy rice! I love making this dish when I am lazy (again) in washing up. Essentially, you only need to wash one pot!

Tip: Control the amount of water you use to dissolve the curry, 

the less water to use for thicker texture. 

Instead of rice, you can have curry udon!

        Yang Sheng Le Herbal Soup

The Asian dinner is always described as 三菜一湯 3 dishes and a soup. While Caucasians drink soup as appetizers, the Chinese drink soup along with their dishes. The Cantonese always say 補湯  ， soups always have a nourishing connotation. 

If only this Singaporean product with no preservatives and no flavouring existed back in my days away from Mum’s care! In Australia, I tried to replicate mum’s soup to some hit and misses. Most of them taste bland despite the handful of ikan bilis I threw in. Being a student, I didn’t think it was worthwhile to buy meat to boil soup (I will rather eat meat) so I used chicken bones that didn’t make it any tastier.

Also, I did not have the time to simmer the soup like Grandmothers do. With this concentrated herbal soup, you will definitely warm his heart making him think you’re just like his Grandma except in a hotter body!

Tip: Add in ingredients like Chinese dates, wolfberries, chicken to fake it seamlessly!

Just like playing the game of Bluff, you need to alternate the real and the fake. Besides the above kitchen secrets, I do have some very simple nutritious and yummy dishes I could whip up without concocted (by other chefs) help.

My favourites are:

Steamed Egg Toufu

Beat an egg, place some toufu, slice some Chinese dried mushrooms (soaked in water first), sprinkle pepper and a dash of soya sauce. Steam.

 Soya Sauce Salmon with Tomato

Drench the salmon with soya sauce, cut big slices of tomato and shred ginger.  Steam.

Baked Beans Omelette

A winning combination, it’s a undisputed skill to keep it wrapped and pretty.

ABC soup

The one and only soup that I can make with perfection that has vitamins A,B and C. Chop up celery, potato, corn and carrots. Throw into a pot with chicken meat and cook. I like to add in raw cashew nuts too!

So there you go, I am the epitome of a perfect Asian housewife. 3 dishes and a soup.

Until one day, I saw a stingray at the market and got SO EXCITED. I fantasized about recreating the famous Singaporean sambal stingray and gloated at being such a potential housewife buying such a huge slice of stingray at AUD 6 when it sells SGD 12 for a small thin piece.

Like how all liars get called bluff and cheaters get caught, my Bree cover was blown when I served the stingray as it looks. Raw, red and I thought it was cooked.

My then-boyfriend fed and fat from 2 years of cooking finally asked, “Do you Actually know How To Cook?"

Why don't you try? #Cookforfamily with these tips! After all, a family who eats together stays together.

Oh, but we broke up. Nothing to do with my cooking! Hahaha.

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www.gudanggrosiran.com Categories: cook, cook for family, food, housewive, recipes

Cereal Bunglers

Nostalgiafests don't butter any parsnips - let alone feed 7 billion people

The top three stories on last night's C4 News formed an instructive conjunction:

Story 1

The government's panic programme to dish out Tamiflu like Smarties (see this blog) has backfired badly. It seems that for children at least, the side effects are worse than the swine flu Tamiflu was meant to be treating.

Now who could possibly have foreseen that?

Well, the Doc for one. When the Smarties programme was launched last month, he delivered his definitive verdict:

"I can prescribe Tamiflu, though as yet I have not. I would not take it, and I would not give it to my family, so why would I prescribe it for patients? What this means is that anyone with any vaguely viral symptom is going to get "treatment" for a condtion they probably do not have with a drug that is next to useless and may have hitherto unexpected side effects. Great!"

Story 2

The government's panic programme - expensively fronted by My Lord Sugar - to provide thousands of new apprenticeships has flopped:

"Earlier this year the government announced it would fund an extra 35,000 apprenticeships as part of efforts to tackle the recession, costing £140m. But its figures show there has been a decline in the numbers of 16 to 18-year-olds in England starting them - in the first nine months of 2008-09 the number dropped by 8.3% on the same period the previous year."

Now who could possibly have foreseen that?

Well, Tyler for one. Back in January when the programme was launched he wrote:

"It's all part of Labour's current headline management/money burning exercise known as Doing Something Not Nothing.

Apprenticeships only work if employers actually take on apprentices, and with the virtual demise of British manufacturing, they largely stopped doing so.

What's more, the government's grandiose programme to have all 16 year olds stay on at school means that the minority who do leave are rather unlikely to be the ones employers might want to take on as apprentices."

Story 3

The government is now planning to inflict a new programme on us "to change the way food is produced and processed so that we continue to enjoy healthy affordable food in the decades ahead". The Rev Benn climbed into the pulpit and pleaded with us to mend our ways - before it's too late.

To which we say que?

Are we not supplied with cheap food beyond the wildest imaginings of our great grandparents? Is not the variety and the quality (if not the taste) fantastic? Is not food production getting more efficient with every passing year (watch the latest episode of the excellent Mud Sweat and Tractors here - especially you, Tyler Senior)? What's to change?

True, food prices did increase quite sharply last year. But they've now turned down again, and the longer term downward trend is unmistakable - even in this chart taken from Defra's own paper (food prices vs the RPI):

Indeed, despite the occasional hiccough, relative to general prices - and certainly relative to incomes - UK food prices have been on a long-term downward trend since the abolition of the Corn Laws in 1846. Which is why food now comprises only around 12% of the RPI shopping basket.

So what about the soaring population - all those extra mouths to feed?

Well, yes, from the perspective of food prices, that is somewhat less than ideal. But the vicar does not suggest we impose a Chinese style one child policy, or even that we should cap immigration. So he clearly doesn't think that's a pressing issue (Tyler has just been sent a paper by a BOM correspondent that puts an alternative view - we'll read and blog it in due course).

And let's not forget that technology is moving on apace, so that yields are still increasing. Here's Defra's chart for cereal yields since 1970:

And you know the really good bit? The recent increase in prices will surely serve to spur on the producers to invest in yet more technology to produce yet more food from the same amount of land.

It's called the market, you see. Higher prices = higher profits = more investment = higher production = more for everyone.

And if you're a believer in markets like Tyler, you say the markets will take care of it. The markets will spot the need for more food and will drive the technology to deliver it. Simples.

Or rather, simples as long as our bungling politicos and commissars don't decide they can do better than the market. As long as they don't step in to forbid the necessary technological innovation, say, or to subsidise farmers to take yet more of our fields out of production. Say.

Remind me - why does anyone ever believe these arrogant clowns know what they're doing?

PS Actually, the report Defra have published to support the Rev Benn's sermon is packed with fascinating charts. Here are one or two of them.

First, the real price of various agricultural commodities since 1970:

Not much of an upward trend there.

Second, the origins of the food we eat here:

Thank God for international trade, otherwise we'd still be living on turnips.

Third, the breakdown of where we buy our food:

Looks like we still disagree with the BBC and the Grun about Tesco - we clearly see it as a great grocer rather than the embodiment of capitalist evil.

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www.gudanggrosiran.com Categories: food, markets

Breakfast at Mc Donald's...

Okay. So this is what happened before the title.

Obviously it is our last day at Bowling--in short, every class ends today. Summer is over, no school, and no allowance. Besides the fact that those are happening, this last day of classes has been the best end ever.
I arrived early at Ylanan gym and noticed that same laminated fan... so I walked coolly towards them. He was ashtonished (in my opinion) and so I asked, where are the others and why are they still there. He replied immediately, "because Alvin doesn't want to go inside yet.". The guy named Alvin (was it?) stood up and said, "okay let's go in". We walked altogether and I talked with Joanna. We talked about Art Stud 1. He went ahead, sat on the corner and then we followed. We talked and talked. About the new sked, and all that.
After waiting for no one to arrive, someone had told us, "We were supposed to go to Alumni Center!" we left. Alex also came in and noticed my new look. I didn't mind compliments, and she told him her praises for me. I do not know how he reacted. All I know is he wears red. :) We talked about evolution as we walked side by side and got noticed again by the others...
Upon arriving, someone told us that we should be at the Cafeteria where we will enter by two's. There sits sir and we talked. We chatted before knowing... and voila, it was ended. Venus went by and told us to walk along with their group. We chatted happily, talking about our whereabouts. We all decided to go to SC.
I called Venus "Venus Say" and we saw many red Volkswagen. They did "pendong peace" and he and I talked. We also sang "Venus say" to his cue. Oh well, on our way was laugh trip and that, then we were just scribbling Japanese characters in the air. Miss Keim said, "You're really a perfect pair" and then I justified that, "we both just enrolled a Japanese class".
While at SC Keim asked us if we want to have breakfast. We all agreed. And then we went out SC, and decided about Mc Do. I suggested and he agreed. He also said, "two votes for Mc Do". Miss Keim agreed.
And so there, we went to Mc Do and I was the first on cue. The cashier said, "The others could go there" and pointed to the vacant line. He was to follow when he decided to stay with me. I was the first one to buy. We all were eating together and he sat beside me. The set-up was like this: Jan, Keim and Yuji in front of us and us beside each other. So happy me... :)
Jan came out first since it's 9 already and she has class. The four of us talked about anime and then it's time to go. We parted ways in front of Mc Do, Yuji and I will net and they will go back to UPD. I smiled for the last time, and he smiled (in my own perspective). I will never forget this "Breakfast at Mc Donald's"...

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www.gudanggrosiran.com Categories: 13, bowling, food, friends, lastday, School, upd