Food Talk

I used to enjoy cooking alot. Unfortunately, after having 2 kids and less time in hand, I'd found less joy in cooking. When Adrian and I were studying here, we used to have cooking sessions with friends. It was fun. Cooking, eating, chatting and basically just chilling out after a meal with friends. I remembered making bread and cakes. Those were the days. Very carefree indeed. This time round, I found cooking a chore. You see, when I didn't feel like cooking in Singapore, I could just 'dabao', eat out at hawker centres or foodcourts, or simply drop by my parents'. People here just don't eat out as much as we do back home. Furthermore, it's not cheap for a family of 4 to have a meal out, even if it's at McDonald's. I simply run out of ideas on what to cook sometimes. Or if I'm feeling lazy, I'll just pop a pizza in the oven or get a takeaway from the fish and chip shop. Unhealthy I know but I don't do it that often.

My dad, being a keen cook, wanted to cook stew duck when he came to visit us a month ago. But when we realised a duck cost more than 10pounds, he dropped the idea and cooked stew pork belly instead. I'm really surprised a duck cost that much since we can get a roast duck for abt 13pounds from Chinatown.

I was at Sainsbury's the other day and saw that the ducks were going for half the usual price, I quickly grabbed one. Armed with my dad's and mum's recipe, I went ahead to stew the duck even though I couldn't get hold of galangal. The dark soy sauce I have looks more like the light version so the duck didn't turn out 'nice'. Taste wise, it's not too bad but not as good as my mum's. Well, it's only my first try.

We went to Wing Yip, a big Chinese supermarket in Croydon today. It wasn't planned. We'd wanted to bring the girls to a lake but the weather didn't look good. Then on our way to Legoland, it started to rain. So, we went to Croydon instead. At the supermarket, I saw Prima Taste's Char Kway Teow and was inspired to cook it. Bought fresh kway teow, fishcakes, Cai Xin and beansprouts. Back home, I tried to conjure up the dish. Thanks to the Thai dark soy sauce I bought sometime back, my char kway teow turned out to be very authentic and Adrian had second helping.