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A Crash Course in Cooking

Everybody has a talent.

One may be good at singing, dancing, playing sports, baking or cooking... but for me I feel cooking filipino food is really not my talent.

Last Sunday after going to mass, my feet took me infront of a Bonggo Truck loaded with Philippine goods. My eyes were filled with much happiness to see all my goodies being sold in the truck- the cheese, nata de coco, polvoron, Red Chippy, condensed milk, nido, some fresh vegetables and a lot more. To my cravings, I thought it woud be best If I'll try to cook something for the whole family since I've never tried cooking filipino food here in Korea. So I bought a bundle of string beans (sitaw), a bundle of Kangkong, three pieces of bitter melon (ampalaya), 2 pieces of Tilapia, a sinigang mix and a tomato sauce. With the smiles I wear on my face I was really confident I could do a nice sweet and sour tilapia and a side dish of ginisang ampalaya.

So I did what I had to do. Cleaned the fish, fried and sauteed all ingredients in the sweet and sour sauce. Then cut the ampalaya and sauteed with tomatoes and egg. Presto! Done.

Then the tasting began. The Sweet and Sour Tilapia looked pretty much delicious... when tasted.. bland. I forgot to put salt on the fish before frying. Then I tasted the sauteed ampalaya. Mmmmmm~ remember the feeling when you bit a lansones seed? it was the very same feeling. The problem? I just found it out when I asked Ate Nympha why it was bitter. I never mashed the ampalaya with salt before I sauteed it. Poor me! My ambitious attempt of a perfect dish went nothing. (To justify my deeds, I rarely cooked way back before)And so, I still have remaining hope.. to cook a perfect sinigang this weekend. But before that, I had already called Ate Nympha on how to cook sinigang in details( She was really bursting with laughter when I told her the results of my cooking).


Lessons that I've learned:


1. Get to know the procedures.

2. Get to know the taste.

3. Get a lot of practice (visualizing is one but trying is much challenging)

4. And lastly, prepare some good reasons when everything turns out bad-- "Actually, I wasn't good at that!" or "Hmm, it was my first attempt" to exempt you from criticisms... hehe

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