Food experimenting

As you all know, we are a bunch of people that has no prior experience in cooking whatsoever. Among the four of us, I think I have the least kitchen experience. Theoretically, I know how it works, the procedures, steps, how-to, but practical wise, I’m a zero.


Therefore now is the best time for us to experiment with food. We improvise the cooking recipe as we have limited supply of seasoning and ingredients. Truth to be told, our limited cooking skill is not a limit to our creativity. IN fact, I think our food turn out rather well if I may say so.


We started off with easy to make dishes. Gradually, we try on the harder stuff. We make a few phone calls back to mom asking for cooking tips and recipes. We had Godzilla here whose specialty is pasta. Then we have Twister here who does Hokkien style dishes. Dinosaur just loves cutting and chopping and dicing. Whereas for me, I tried helping in every area that needs attention. I’m good at giving directions, advice and how-to ngek ngek ngek ;p


To date, we have been experimenting with many varieties that would make everyone proud of us hohohohohoho~ Our experiments results in new “dishes” that I would like to share with you here.


1) Hokkien Style Fried Spagetti
How did we come out with this dish? One day, we wanted to cook Spaghetti Bolognese. Therefore we cooked the pasta and opened up few cans of spaghetti sauce. Only thing is, the cans of spaghetti sauce is not what we thought it is. It is actually cans of spaghetti IN sauce. We were like, “Oh, Lord! What are we to do?” We definitely have too much pasta noodle on hands expecially since the pasta is already cooked. Then suddenly some genius (can’t remember who) suggest that why don’t we do fried spaghetti like those in HK café in Msia? Then we save the cans of spaghetti for the next day. Hence the birth of our very own hokkien style fried spaghetti.
Ingredients: Spagetti, dark soy sauce, soy sauce, chicken, onion.
Optional: carrot or any vegetables, egg,


2) Potato Salad
Wow this is truly a gem! Thank God Dinosaur learned something useful during his time in D&P. He learned how to make a mean potato salad! Simple to make and can be kept for a couple of days if needed to. I really like it^^ In fact, yesterday I had my first try at mixing it^^ Fun I tell you!


3) Roti Canai
Actually we have no idea at all how to make roti canai like those in mamak ones. However, we were adventurous enough to attempt it. In the end it wasn’t really a success as we only uses plain flour, oil, salt and water to make the dough. It didn’t end up like the soft texture we always see the mamak when they toss the dough and all. Our dough seems more compact and harder to “fold”. Nevertheless, it doesn’t tasted too bad. It’s quite like roti canai, except not as soft and fluffy. We suspect we need to insert baking soda to make the dough more fluffy. However, we really have no idea and we doubt the mamak people would share their recipe with us. We’ll just have to improvise ourselves and experiment more on it.


4) Fried Rice/Porridge
Okay, this is kinda a failure really. You see, we haven’t had any rice for more than a week and we missed it. Truth to be told, we are all kinda rice bucket (fan tong) but here in NZ, it’s not easy to find rice cooker. People here boil rice either in pot or in microwave which as you can guess, is not our specialty. Yours truly attempt to cook rice in pot over the stove. We mix brown and white rice together and the result is disaster. The water is too much because we thought the brown rice was not cooked! Little did I know that brown rice texture is harder compared to white rice. Therefore, the pot of rice turned out half lumpy, like porridge but less water. So left with no choice, we just have to fry it. So it kinda in between fried porridge and lumpy rice. Still rice cooker is the best!!!


Apart from new experiments, we also do the normal dishes such as chicken rice, stir-fry vegetables and rice. You know, the things that our mother normally cook at home. The only thing is, right now we need to dissect mom’s dishes in our mind to figure out what ingredients she put into the dishes in order for us to re-create the dish here on our own. Well, of course sometimes we do call mom up and asked for recipe. But most of the time, we just rely on our own judgement and do “Jamie Oliver” style. *Secukup rasa*


Seriously, asking mom about recipe is pretty much Jamie Oliver style too. Like, would they tell you how much sugar and salt you need to add to your dish? Now you understand me^^


Let’s see what else we have cooked so far…. Erm we cooked bah kut the (yes, we can cook a decent bah kut the ok?), steamed chicken rice, stir-fry chicken in sesame oil, grilled venison steak, salami, fried vermicelli, stir-fried variety of vegetables, ABC soup and et cetera et cetera…


Due to time constraint and limited internet usage, I am unable to load any photos for viewing. For photos of our creations, please view the photo album posted by Dinosaur in FB. You may contact me for more info. I am more than happy to share my knowledge, or lack of it^^