9. In the Kitchen

My first distinct memory of helping out in the kitchen was somewhere in middle school. Mom called home while she was out getting groceries and asked me to chop garlic so it’d be ready by the time she got home. After several attempts of trying to chop apart the cloves, our friend who was playing at our house that afternoon stepped in and showed me how peeling apart the outside layers let you get to the cloves inside. It wasn’t till a few more times of being assigned this task that my mom showed me how to crush the cloves under a wide blade to make the cloves easily to peel.

I’m grateful that my mom made me help out in the kitchen all through high school, and I picked up most of my experience there. Onions and garlic go in first for their aroma. Use a mixture of cornstarch and water to thicken the sauce in stir fried vegetables. Put in these vegetables first, these last because of how quickly they cook. Add flour to thicken the ground meat to for chicken burgers. Add more sesame oil for the meatballs for hot pot.

Still, I don’t remember when I actually started to enjoy cooking. I didn’t do much of it the first year I moved off campus. Too busy with a full load of engineering classes and leading small group, I must have heated up a lot of frozen foods, ate a lot of pasta with pre-made sauces, and probably grabbed McDonald’s or Subway on more than I’d like to admit. I first remember being real proud of a full home-cooked meal the following year after I moved to the Yellow House and started working for co-op. Among the list of cooking adventures: shopping at farmer’s market, finally going to the Chinese supermarket, and accomplishing some staples like sweet and sour chicken or kuey teow tung (my favorite noodle soup, though never made with the complex flavors of the genuine Malaysian version).

I recently realized that part of my motivation for cooking is necessity. Not just the need-to-survive and living-on-a-budget necessity. But learning to make the dishes I love at home is necessary so I can enjoy, well, the foods I like in life. Malaysian food is way too expensive, and as much as we go to Banana Leaf, we can never order everything we want (nor really afford to go all the time!). And at some point I’m going to want to eat the sour flavors of asam fish or hot curry chicken while I’m weeks away from my next visit home. So that’s motivating the slow exploration, though I must admit it’s disappointing to make a whole dish that, while tasty, doesn’t taste quite right. I’m reminding myself that my mom and the chefs have had years and years of practice, but it doesn’t take away from the fact that I wish I was eating my mom’s asam fish tonight other than my own…