Cooking

Background

I decided that I want to learn to cook this summer. And because I have to make everything a complicated project that I’ll give up on in a short amount of time, I’ve created a blog website thing to journal, document, and show off my cooking! You’re reading it!

I created this website primarily for two reasons. First, it’s good to journal, especially when you’re learning something new, so that when things inevitably don’t work out, I’ll have documentation about why, and can write down what I’ve learned and can refer back to my notes when I try to make something similar. The second reason is because my mom, who is excellent at cooking, and has tried countless times to teach me to cook to my continual whining about how much I hate cooking, is out of town, and is missing this very exciting time of my career. If she weren’t out of town, I wouldn’t have any real desire to learn to cook. So I’m sorry Mom but I hope you can enjoy watching me try and do this! Also I like making websites.

The day I set out to cook, I spent the majority of the day deliberating and stressing over what dish to attempt. First I wanted to make something authentically Taiwanese, as I miss Taiwanese food (Mother is Taiwanese, and therefore so am I). Taiwanese Braised Pork Rice (滷肉飯) seemed a reasonable choice. However, the recipe seemed too complicated and called for a few specialty ingredients I wasn’t sure I could get my hands on.

Fried rice is known for being easy to cook. You use leftover, cooled rice and whatever protein and vegetables you have and throw them together in a pan. Despite not having any leftover rice, I decided to make fried rice. In the early afternoon, I cooked 4 cups of rice (3 cups white, 1 cup brown) in our rice cooker and put it in the fridge to cool. Again, not ideal, but I wanted to start with something I knew would be simple and something I felt somewhat more comfortable with.

Fried rice typically contains eggs, but I don’t like eggs so I opted out. My sister, Casey, was not happy when she heard my fried rice would contain no eggs. She said something along the lines of “the whole point of fried rice is eggs!” and threatened not to eat it. She ended up eating it.

Dad had cooked chicken and frozen it a couple days earlier, so I put that in the sous vide to thaw. Here’s a full list of ingredients.

Ingredients

• 4 cups of rice
• some amount of chicken (thighs I think? they filled the bottom part of a gallon ziploc bag)
• 2 broccoli heads (not very Asian, but who cares!)
• 1 cob of corn, cut off the cob
• 2 bunches of green onion, I only used the firm parts
• 1 smallish yellow onion
• 2 garlic cloves
• avocado oil
• soy sauce
• salt (a generous amount)

Recipe

I loosely followed the fried rice recipe from Pam Anderson’s book How to Cook Without a Book. Here were my steps.

1. I prepared everything. The chicken was cooked already and just needed to be thawed. I steamed the corn. Then I used just the knife for a while: the yellow onion was chopped pole to pole, then halved; corn cut off the cob; minced the green onion and garlic; and cut the broccoli and chicken into bite-sized chunks. Oh, and I put the cut chicken in a bowl and mixed soy sauce in for additional flavor. Dad had already seasoned the chicken with salt and pepper so I was pretty conservative with the soy sauce.

2. After I was sure everything was prepared and ready to throw in, I took the largest pan (pot? skillet? who cares) I could find and turned it to high-ish heat, added avocado oil, and once it was heated, added the garlic. The recipe said to wait to add garlic but I know my mom always adds the garlic at this point for just about everything she’s ever made. Though maybe that’s for sauteing. What’s the difference?

3. Then the garlic looked like it was going to burn so I quickly added the onions. The book instructed me to wait for them to begin browning without losing firmness. (The book’s language was much clearer than that I just don’t feel like getting up and finding the book to quote it.) It smelled good.

4. Then the broccoli. The broccoli and onion were the two raw vegetables that would require the most time.

5. Once the broccoli felt about right (just the vibes, I think?), I added the chicken. I also started wondering if the pan was too small.

6. I mixed it and stirred until the chicken was warmed through. Then I took everything out and put it in a bowl for later, added avocado oil and put the rice in the pan. I should’ve added the corn and green onions before taking everything out, and I should’ve used far more oil—more on my mistakes later.

7. I had to remove all the clumps out of the rice and let it heat thoroughly. Unfortunately I needed about five times the amount of oil I used, which caused the rice to immediately stick to the pan. By the end of this project there was far more stuck rice than the photo conveys.

8. Then I added the old mixture back in with the rice, added the corn and green onions that I’d previously neglected, and poured in some soy sauce, and mixed. This took significant arm strength that I don’t wholly posses.

The pan was also clearly a little too small for my convenience:

9. I mixed it all until my arm felt too sore to continue. Then I was done! I taste-tested and determined that a generous amount of salt was required, so I added and mixed more.

I also made quite a mess (don’t ask me about the kitchen floor):

Result

Aside from gaining arm muscle, the result of my efforts was a reasonably edible meal. To me, it tasted less like fried rice and more like regular rice with stuff mixed in, but it was certainly a tolerable dinner. It was healthy, I think, since it had rice and vegetables and chicken, and all ingredients were fresh and good quality and all that. Hopefully.

My sister and father both enjoyed it more than I did.

Cleaning the kitchen didn’t take all that long since I didn’t wait more than 20 minutes before doing it, so nothing had really dried out at that point. The pan was a pain in the ass to wash, though. I had to use a metal spoon to aggressively scrape off the persistent layer of mushy rice. Yay arm strength!

I forgot to wash the rice cooker so thanks Dad!

Learnings

Okay so I learned a lot! A lot of it was getting past the psychological barricade: cooking felt so scary and inaccessible but just doing this proved that wrong. It certainly wasn’t easy but it was far from being as bad as I’d imagined it. I feel much more confident working in the kitchen now, I think.

The book begins the fried rice recipe by explaining this, but my stupid head couldn’t wrap itself around the concept. Fried rice requires a shit ton of oil in order to actually fry. This would also help with adding some more flavor to the rice, making the rice less wet, and making the pan far easier to clean. The vegetables could’ve probably used more oil, too.

I also should’ve used maybe less rice (3 cups?) and a lot more corn would’ve been good. I like corn. It also was fine without eggs!!

Conclusion

Overall, this first project was a minor success. I did the first thing, which was making a thing, and successfully documented it. I also learned from it. I need to stick to this and continue my attempts. Yay!

As a side note, I don’t know what I might’ve forgotten to include in this so I may very well come back to add stuff. This is really more for my reference than anything. So yeah.