(1115) Good cooks, bad cooks

I commented how I enjoyed the yellow pulut (sticky rice) cooked with coconut milk as a savoury base to go with chicken curry. My host replied that the curry might be difficult to get cooked right. But he thinks anybody who tries cooking the rice using a good recipe could easily get it right after a few tries. As he puts it, it is a no brainer.

Interestingly, I have always used my mother-in-law's creation as a standard to measure such a dish against. While I have not tried cooking it, I would eat it whenever I see it during pot bless or in a buffet. Seldom do I get both cooked to my high standard of expectation. This dish is one of the Nyonya (Peranakan cooking is the legacy of Chinese who blended Chinese cooking with much Malay influence through the generations) dish. My mum-in-law's mum-in-law wore sarong and spoke Malay as a primary language at home all her life. Recipes are passed on from generation to generation. Sad to say, neither my husband's generation nor my children's generation took the trouble to learn these delicious recipes.

After picking my hostess' brain as well, it seemed that people who love good food often learn to produce it with little or no previous cooking experience while they could not purchase restaurant-produced food overseas as students or new immigrants.

Their children, who had never boiled water at home, were sent overseas with a minimum of two cooking sessions. Both girls could produce a list of good food, like barbecue pork(both char siew, siew yuk), chocolate walnut cake, lemon meringue pie, ... Their elder girl's fiancée could cooked up western steak with apple sauce without much problem at first try. He never entered his parents' kitchen prior to going abroad.

According to my son, good cooking requires a little basic experience and a lot of common sense. Maybe the fact I could never produce excellent food is because I lack passion. My daughters  have no need to learn to cook well because they have not been overseas for the long haul, there was no need to learn to cook. After all, street-cooked food is plentiful and low in price in this country.

While I visited Arlington, Texas to look see the campus in 1984, I was lodging with friends of my brother's. I was so free that month, daily jogging in the indoor sports centre and morning swim in the apartment pool left plenty of time to experiment with food. I must have exhausted my usual menu of fried rice, fried bee hoon(vermicella), spaghetti, fried beef wanton, pork dumplings, ... I remember cooking asam laksa(spicy sour fish soup with rice stick and vegetables), black sticky rice with meat and mushroom, red bean soup, bobo chacha ( a dessert of yam, sweet potatoes in coconut milk soup). Personally I didn't think much of my attempts, but my temporary housemates were delighted with a volunteer cook. They were busy with classes, projects, assignments, part time jobs and dating. Before and after my visit, they subsisted with food from the cafeteria, instant noodle or biscuits.