Where Is My To-Blame List?! My Dinner Was Screwed!

You know how couples occasionally plan their evening sex first thing in the morning, romance with the idea the entire day, and then have a wonderful time in the evening waking up the neighbors throughout the night? The entire day today, I kept thinking of my home cooked dinner. You see, cooking at home as a professional worker requires lots of planning and coordination. For one, I need to defrost the meat one day in advance by taking it out from the freezer and transfer it to the refrigerator the night before. Ever since I have started working, I hardly have the opportunity to cook at home.

I must be joking about cooking at home right? Ya, I get that a lot. Actually, cooking at home does not take too much time – especially the Cantonese dishes. And since you are my number one friend, I am going to show you how. This not-too-naked-chef has 18 years of cooking experience and my dishes have won over many hearts. No joke joke. People say the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. I would say the way to a girl’s panties heart is good home cooked food.

To save time, first and foremost important is to switch on the rice cooker. It may sound obviously duh but hear me out. The sooner you switch on the rice cooker, the sooner you can have your dinner. Between the moment you switch on the rice cooker and the moment food enters your stomach is … depends on the power of your rice cooker … it is 30 mins cooking time and 10 mins of cool off time with my antique cooker (according to my mother, that 10 mins does magic to the end result). That’s right, only 40 mins or less. If you are quick in preparing the food, you may even have half an hour doing other things outside your kitchen.

What it means is that the moment you step onto your home, forget about taking off your contact lens, forget about changing into your PJ, forget about stripping naked, go straight into the kitchen and cook the rice.

I love a brown and white rice mix and tonight, I was going to have steam egg with minced pork and lettuce with oyster sauce. Nothing fancy. Just simple home cooked food.

After switched on the rice cooker, I opened the refrigerator and took out the ingredients …

AARRRRGGGGHHHHHHHH!

The lettuce was rotten! Goodness gracious me! What the … It was just … one week or so ago! Crap!

People around me know that I have this To-Blame List and whenever I take it out, they will duck their heads and run for cover. I took out this To-Blame List and since Cynthia was not around …

1. Blame NTUC for selling lettuce that rots.

Fine. I would have to do without lettuce. To cook steam egg and minced pork is pretty easy. Marinate the meat with soy sauce, sugar, salt, corn flour, and for me, I like to add Chinese wine and sesame seed oil. Standard procedure for all kinds of meat except beef as salt will make the meat chewy. If you like dry scallops, soak a few in water beforehand (if time is a luxury you don’t have, just boil it), break them into small pieces and mix with the pork. Since egg cooks a lot faster than meat, stir fry the meat first till cooked and place it onto a dish.

Oh, for the Muslim readers, feel free to replace pork with beef.

As for the eggs, depending on how much meat you wish to eat. For 200 grams of meat, I usually put in three eggs. Smash them up, add some salt, and add enough water to increase the volume by say 20%. Pour the egg mixture onto the cooked meat.

Then … just steam the dish over boiling water for 10 minutes.

And right after I cooked the meat …

AARRRRGGGGHHHHHHHH!

… the gas ran out! Not to worry, I have a backup cylinder … and …

AARRRRGGGGHHHHHHHH!

That one ran out too! Com’on! This is not happening! What was I gonna do with cooked meat and raw egg mixture? I took out my To-Blame List and started to think of my mother who was in my place two months ago cooking heavily each day, started to think of Cynthia … and …

2. Blame Shell for not filling up my gas cylinder just a tiny weeny more.

Extreme situation calls for extreme measure. Think, think, I can do it.

Eventually I cooked the dish inside my oven. Took 10 mins to warm the oven up to 140 degree. After 20 mins of baking, the egg mixture was only half cooked. I removed the aluminium foil that covered the dish and up the temperature to 180 degree. After an additional 10 mins of cooking time, the end result was just like the picture shown at the beginning of this blog.

I did not know what to expect. Actually, the end result did look better than the steam version. Except that the surface was not soft and moist and it was tedious to wash the burn marks off. It did taste somewhat the same. Oh well …

Question in my head throughout the meal was … how come it took so much longer to cook the dish inside the oven? We all know that water does not go beyond 100 degree but yet, it is so much more efficient to steam than bake. Anyway, the power consumption of my oven is 1.15kWh. That works out to … 1.15 (consumption per hour) x 2/3 (cooking time) x S$0.2052 = S$0.16.

Hmmm … I thought it would cost me a bomb to cook with my oven.