TAKE*5 project #7

Posted by: lemonbarleystrawberry on: May 24, 2011

• In: Uncategorized
• Comment!

thanks to jamie, i had the opportunity to work as a promotion girl for barilla pasta last weekend.

i took up the job despite having known that it would be very tiring. well, that’s mainly because one, the pay was really good and two, i secretly felt it could help me with my TAKE*5 project #7, which is to…

LEARN COOKING

hehehe.

and yes the stint really opened up possibilities for me!

the chefs at the demonstration sessions made cooking pasta look really easy, so if anything else, it gave me the CONFIDENCE that i could do it too!

one of the chefs, aeroy also inspired me when he told me that he had learnt cooking on his own and everything is like a fun experiment, where agarlation (loosely translated as estimation) is the fundamental rule.

yes i can do that!!!

looking back, my journey of cooking hasnt really been a smooth-sailing one.

i remember my good friend siewlin and i always used to loudly declare that the only thing that was stopping us from becoming gourmet chefs was not knowing how to switch on the stove, HAHAHA.

i dont know why that was such a problem for us back then but now, i’m proud to say that it troubles me no more because my mom has bought me a long-neck lighter. in that case, i dont have to get near the fire at all.

how brilliant! *smug*

but just when i thought i was all set to flaunt my talent, my mom held me back by saying that she didnt like me messing around in her kitchen.

and so even when i prepared my first-ever 爱心午餐 for kingsley, she was hovering over me all the time.

to be very honest, i didnt even get to enjoy much of the cooking process because she had helped me prepare all the ingredients and all i did was to throw everything into the wok and add in the condiments as instructed.

like a puppet, boo.

so this time round, i made sure i was fully involved in the cooking process from the beginning to the end, without any supervision, hmph!

early in the morning, i jumped out of bed and started my project with gusto. i marched into the kitchen and proudly announced that i was going to make my own breakfast.

with PASTA.

hahahaha. i was too eager about my new-found inspiration and determination to care about the result, i.e. the eating part.

i know aglio olio is a little heavy for breakfast, especially when it was not even 9 in the morning yet, but i was too fired up to care.

i moved around the kitchen like i was on mission, asking intelligent questions about the ingredients (like where everything was, for a start); banging pots and pans around like i knew exactly what i needed and what i was doing.

and it worked!!!

my mom didnt try to stop me and she even offered to go to the supermarket to get me a bottle of olive oil, which we didnt have at home!

i was so pleased with myself until i realised that since my mom was not at home, nobody could help me with some questions that i forgot to ask.

like the fact that i needed garlic but i didnt know how it looks like unchopped and uncooked, so i couldnt see if we had it at home*.

ah but that is trivial, of course; and so, easily overcome.

*answer is, yes we do have it at home and it looks like onion, but of different colour.

phew.

all set.

i know authentic aglio olios do not have hotdogs and fish cakes but i like to be creative (and i really like hotdogs and fish cakes).

next, it didnt occur to me that my spaghetti would be too long to be fully immersed in the hot water in the pot, so i kinda panicked for a while when they stood straight and stubborn and i couldnt bend them or force the lid on them.

i couldnt remember what the chefs did at the demonstration sessions and i couldnt call my mom because i didnt want her to think i was clueless after all.

in the end, i broke them into shorter strands, which i’m sure is not the right way; but you know, desperate times call for desperate measures and all that.

thanks to my moments of uncertainty, i also forgot to add salt into the water and as warned by the chefs, the spaghetti ended up sticking together when i tried to fry them.

siansation.

and then one thing led to another and i forgot to taste my food before i served it so i didnt know that i hadnt added salt.

somehow i just thought that by adding in more olive oil, the whole thing would be fragrant and savory like what i tasted at the demonstration sessions.

not surprisingly, i ended up with tasteless, sticky, oddly short spaghetti swimming in olive oil.

add some red colouring and i might as well say it’s mee goreng.

fortunately, my brothers didnt take up my offer to cook their share, so the damage was limited to just ME. and the hotdogs and fish cakes were nice.

my mother was very encouraging and didnt mock me with a i-told-you-so lecture or worse, ban me from future attempts.

all she said was that i would probably have done better if i had heeded her advice to use the pasta sauce she had bought for me. (“nothing can go wrong if you just add all those tomato sauce to cover everything.”)

oh well.

a good start, i would say.

at least i know how garlic looks like now.

and since my mom had bought this HUGE bottle of pasta sauce, yes i shall try again tomorrow.

so stay tuned to lemonbarleystrawberry, for you are about to see the emergence of the next julia child, woot!