Cooking and Me

I love cooking. Sure, I am definitely not able to whip up the most fantastic-tasting (or aesthetically good-looking for that matter) dishes, but that's another matter altogether, and it's not deterring my love for cooking. The process may get really long and tedious; chopping/mincing resulting in aching arms (no less!), checking constantly to see if the food's ready, but the end product is usually worth the effort. At least to me.

I derive pleasure from learning about really simple things in life, I mean, I often marvel in wonder how things work. Such a wonderful thing about life and what goes on it it.

After the past few sessions of kitchen experiments, I've come to realize that I prefer to adopt a trial-and-error method in cooking rather than sticking to a very rigid set of instructions. That may have been the cause of some of the experiment failures, I'm sure.

Early this morning, I decide to make sushi. It's my first attempt, and I guess it turned out alright. Well, it was edible and I tried to make it look nice as best as I could. The whole process made me realize how such a simple-looking sushi can involve so much effort; now I'm going to look at the humble sushi in an all different light. Ha.

The bigger ones were the ones made initially... too big, I know..

Spreading of rice (evenly) onto pieces of seaweed is not as easy as it sounds, especially when the rice is super sticky. But I learnt that you can avoid that sticky issue by wetting your hands as you handle the rice.

The full set.

And the rolling of everything combined on the sushi mat... oh my first roll was horrendous. What was supposed to be a roll of potential maki turned out to be blocks of onigiri. Haa! Laugh if you wish, I think it's really funny too. I'm just glad it only got better towards the end.

And just when you thought everything is done after you've cut the roll up into small pieces of maki, you realize it's not the end. Repeat the entire process again. Sticky rice. Seaweed. Filling. Roll. Roll. Cut (Saw). I swear it's a test of patience sometimes... food preparation. Good for training your patience threshold though, I must say.