Dear Cooking Shi Fus,
I think I have never spent SO MUCH time in the kitchen on a weekend before the last 2 days. Oh yeah, and Saturday was the first time I've stepped into a wet market after more than 20 years I believe. Never felt so "sua ku" before. Anyway, here's a summary of how my first cooking experience went.
1. Visit the wet market.
2. Walked round all the stalls in the market to determine which stall had the nicest fish.
3. Bought $5 worth of fish bones & $10 of threadfin.
4. Rushed home to wash and cut fish & bones. Dump 1 portion of bones with a few slices of ginger into pot to be boiled. Divide the remaining portions into different ziplock bags for future use.
5. After 1.5 hrs, dump everything from pot to slow cooker.
6. After 8 hrs, and 1 hour of letting the stock cool, divide it up & store in used jollybean containers. Store 1 in fridge, the other in freezer.
NEXT DAY
1. Wash 1 tablespoon of rice grains.
2. Dump grains & stock into slow cooker.
3. Rush to supermarket to buy organic brocolli.
4. After 4 hours, push spoonfuls of porridge thru a sieve into thermos to keep warm.
5. Steam threadfin fish. Mash the fish as much as I can.
6. Steam brocolli. Realize cannot mash brocolli, so dump into blender.
7. Decided to dump fish into blender too.
8. Stir blended stuff into the mushy porridge.
READY TO FEED!
I was so proud of myself, but was holding my breath as my maid slowly put the first spoonful into Laura's mouth.
Laura's reaction - PUKE FACE
She literally gave me the "wanna-puke" look, with her tongue out and all. Broke my heart man. But I told the maid to carry on feeding her, coz I put in so much sweat & blood into the porridge. Yes, blood! I left the kitchen that weekend with bandages on different fingers coz of my lack of experience with knives. Anyway, with much coercing and distracting, we managed to feed her 3/4 portion. Sigh.
I haven't tried cooking porridge again. Need to rest first. Maybe tomorrow. Or maybe after my hands have healed.
