A Dialogue With K

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Originally uploaded by: j9

For the very first time this year, I had attempted to cook my own food. Actually I hadn’t cooked at all eversince my Mom left HK for good many years ago. I mean for a single person, what’s the point of cooking? I have no recipes and I don’t follow the teaspoons & salts. Does it ever feel like I don’t have free time to cook? It’s not that I don’t like to cook. It’s just when someone says cook, you have an image of all these ingredients, time, and ugh, cleanup.

Do you ever stand at the door of the refrigerator, thinking what’s for dinner? Yet today, I feel like a teenager as I open my fridgey and look what I’ve found, a paper bag sealed with packing tape and boy was I suprised, a kilo of fishy smell of fish from the province made by Mom. Dried fish. My brother arrived from the holiday in Bicol last week and brought them for me. I’ve forgotten I stored it in there. Great! Now I thought I’d play around and cook something out for myself. I just need a quick, easy recipes to help me make good food fast!

Since the Park N Shop supermarket are just around the block, I bought a pack of simple & ready-to-eat veggies salad with bunches of lettuce & left it chill and mellow in the fridge. While the dried fish is very easy to cook, it crisps really quickly in a hot frypan. The oil starts to smoke out and terrified that the kitchen was on fire. I also got some fresh scallops, sprinkled them with dried garlic, a bit of salt & covered it with plastic wrap then put them on the microwave for fifteen (15) minutes 3 minutes (thanks Sha for pointing this out). I like shellfish, like scallops, you can buy them ready to cook. Their shells are attractive, their flesh are sweet and tender, and their natural juices are flavour soups and sauces with the essence of the sea. I’m sure it’s always easy to cook shellfish.

In the province, we live in the Islands. It used to be a beautiful place, well it still is, but it was a lot different that time, everyone knows each other like they were your close friends. During my childhood, me and my older brothers usually like to go places other than the sea. We go to these beaches nearby to catch for small fish. My dad’s family way way back had dried-fish store and hated it all the time that even our school uniforms would smell like fish. I miss all those times. As far as I can remember, we also dive to look for seaweeds, an algae kind of “gulaman” in Filipino term. Our grannies back then collects them in tiny glasses, mix it with the sourest vinegar ever, red peppers & store them at the kitchen cabinets for few days letting it sits through the vinegar and would taste delicious. Sounds yukky? I called it a sour-salad dish as your lips turned pale because of the vinegar. How funny it was to think that everyone back in my town look for seeweads every other summer. For me it was such a very typical adventure. I do not know now whether the people there still find these seaweeds for fun or use for business.

My dinner was served slightly funny. I put my tealights on with my reds then pretend I’m having an alfresco dinner watching the buildings outside along with three dishes. I still apt with my usual rice because whatelse is good to eat seafoods? Barehanded. I was quite sad that I didn’t touch the salad.

I think that cooking is fun because cooking is also considered as a hobby. Besides that, I also think that cooking can also relax a person’s mind. After a hard day work, we can coped ourselves in cooking. Then maybe next time, I’ll go with the spaghetti and see how fair I can do it. My first adventure of cooking is to make it extra simple and to keep my stomach full.

Bon Appetit!

Silent Sea
by: KT Tunstall