when it gets chilly

in japan, bila time time dah chilly mcm ni...people bring out their kotatsu (table with heater under them with a comforter-like tablecloth to keep the heat in) and they prepare dishes to help them warm up...amongst popular dishes is of course the nabe (which literally means periuk)

anyway here's a nabe dish i learnt from my juniors last year when they had a nabe party at their house...

Kimchi Nabe

The first thing you do is prepare the dashi (fish stock). Since dashi is a common ingredient in japanese cooking it's easy to find it sold in powder form ..org dulu2 buat from scratch.....pergh mendokusai.. since i don't really like the taste of dashi i added some udon soup to the pot...bagi wangi sikit..

Next you add the kimchi flavouring....masam masam pedas gi tu.

And last but not least you add in all the condiments...fish cake , toufu, chinese cabbage, mochi, mushrooms and so on...my juniors put in pieces of fish to give it more flavor and so on...i opted for chicken meatballs.

Chicken Meatballs

A simple mixture of:

* 1/2               Onion

* 2     cloves    Garlic

*1/2   cm         Ginger

                        Red Chilly (optional)

  250  g            Minced chicken

  1                    Egg

                        Oyster Sauce

                        Katakuriko

                        Salt

Then you just shape it into little balls...and drop them into the soup.....yum yum

cooking and what it means to me

i love to eat...
cooking....not so much...huhu
but when i feel like it...i go all out

this blog is about my life and what i'm going through...mainly in things connected to food...new recipes...failures and so on..

so before i go on...i'm gonna make this all about me and tell you how i came to cooking....

i cooked my first dish solo in fourth grade ( i was barely 10)... telur masak kicap...simple
i called my mom at work after school one day..asking her for the recipe.. and jotted it down and cooked for the first time.. all by myself... i got engrossed with the recipe ..re-copying it again and again in an A4 sized yellow notebook.. the second dish was lala masak lemak which i have since forgotten how to cook since we haven't cooked that in more than 12 years if i'm not mistaken...

after that there was spagetti, bergedil, and so on

i stopped after that..because i entered a boarding school and didn't have a chance to cook again until the time came for me and my fellow batchmates to leave for Japan to study.. it was then that once again i asked my mom for her recipes..sitting next to her ..this time armed with a laptop and thumdrive ready in hand..and so she gave me the basics...curry, nasi minyak, sayur goreng and so on...but i was frustrated...my mother with her years of experience well lets just say they didn't really measure their onions in exact porportions..it was more of a feeling...like when they see..maybe 2 onions is enough...other times its 3 or more depending on the size...

me being who i am...badgered her with question...make it easy i said...how many...2 or 3....only now do i understand...in the art of cooking...apart from desserts (those have exact measurements)..it's all about throwing things together...my mother told me...it was the same when she was younger...she too was once frustrated

but i wasn't too keen on cooking..i cooked a big portion of something and ate it until it was finished sometimes with a dish lasting a week..but that all changed after i met him... let's just say..having someone to share your meals makes you want to try harder...and so i started adding recipes to my little collection...and lets just say its been fun...