Amateur Chef: Netherlands Edition (part 2)

This blog is still ALIIIIVE!!

I know it's a bit late for a Halloween post but I'll use it anyway...

Exams, traveling and some other stuff have kept me busy lately hence this post being long overdue. Regardless, this is the sequel to my previous post. Anyway, on with the story...




Back in my home country when me and my friends went outdoors camping, we would usually barbecue stuff.  A certain friend of mine was a great cook. We always had excellent barbecues. This was probably the method of cooking I was most familiar and comfortable with. Thus, I decided to try to do what he did with the meat before barbecuing it. I put the meat in a bowl. Put some soy sauce, some garlic, some sugar, some salt and some pepper. "Some" meaning I literally had no idea how much of what I was supposed to put. I gave the idiom "playing it by ear" new meaning. I set this aside and work on my other dish. (Yes, I was ambitious. Two meals for my first time. haha )

While I was waiting for the flavor to seep into the meat, I worked on the veggies. I already had veggies in the fridge because I was making salad for myself for the past few days since I don't cook. What was omnivorous me supposed to have when dining with my more culinary-skilled, carnivorous friends? I was searching on le internetz and found this guide. It only has three (expletive) steps. I should be able to manage. I think.  So, I separated the leaves, cleaned them and blanched them in a bowl of boiling salted water for a few seconds. I was honestly quite happy with the result. For the sauce, again playing it by ear, I put some water, some oil and some oyster sauce and waited for it to boil before I poured it on the semi-cooked but still crunchy lettuce. It was quite good for a first time but it definitely could have used some more oyster sauce.

(sorry no pics of the cooking process itself here. was too preoccupied with the cooking itself)

Now, for the meat. I thought it was simple enough. You just have to put some oil on the pan, put the meat in, flip it a few times and check if it's cooked right? They say pictures are more than a thousand words, so I will just use these strikingly beautiful images which are definitely more than a thousand pixels (click for higher res).

Here is what I expected to happen...

seems reasonable enough.

In a perfect world, this is how it would have went. Alas, the world we live in is far from it. Here is what actually happened:

fortunately there was no smoke alarm nearby.

Thankfully, my Spanish floor mate helped me and we somehow managed to cook the meat. Here are the pics I promised:

The porkchop was pretty cut up because I constantly kept on checking whether it was cooked already or not.

My Spanish friend was kind enough to even give me some bread sticks.

Next perhaps is the most crucial question...is it edible?

Well, the veggies and rice are sort of impossible to screw up anyway so yea, it was good. But the meat... I am at a loss for words. I can't describe it. My tongue has never been so confused assessing whether something was delicious or not. I could taste some soy sauce, some sugar, some salt, some pepper... but I honestly could not say if I actually liked it or not. I just kept on eating and eating; deciding whether the taste was good or bad, how could I have made it better, what else should I do with it, and so on. Anyway, I did manage to finish it and I reckon it wasn't bad for a first try.

P.S. this is a really long overdue post. after more than a month, suffice to say, I think I can cook at an acceptable level now.