MY LIFE AS A FOODIE
text
CHARITY KEITA
The
noodle
Debacle
I’ve always been
quite laissez faire
when it comes to
following recipes.
Charity Keita loves to pretend she
can cook Chinese food. But can
she rustle up the real deal?
D
isaster strikes in the
kitchen. It’s the stir fry
sauce! There’s something
wrong with it! That
strange acidic flavour on
my tongue is not sesame oil. I check
the label. Those berries do not look
like sesame seeds. The rest is all in
Chinese. Yuck! But if it’s not Sesame
oil what then? Thank heavens I
tasted it before adding it to the
noodles that are stir frying. Oh wait,
the noodles! They’re burning! While
I was focussed on the sauce, I forgot
that they were cooking with the
veggies, the char siu (Chinese dried
sausage) and the prawns. Ok. Turn
the fire off, take a deep breath and
make a plan B.
I suppose I should explain myself.
I’ve always been quite laissez faire
when it comes to following recipes.
This is probably one of the reasons
why I am a terrible baker. Over the
years I have developed a special
talent for freely adapting recipes
that I have sourced online. Give or
take a hit or miss, my system works
quite well. I cook with intuition and
believe I have an innate ability to
haphazardly feel my way through
recipes according to how I imagine
they should be. Which is why when
the editor of Yummy proposed
that I cook a Chinese meal strictly
following a recipe, I jumped at the
challenge.
So I hit Google, found a great
website called chinasichuanfood.
com and settled on what seemed a
simple stir fried noodle recipe. Next
I headed to a Chinese supermarket
near Yaya centre. That place, oh!
You could write a hundred stories
just by standing there for an hour
observing people go by. I proceeded
to buy the listed ingredients.
Except of course everything in the
supermarket is written in Chinese
and few people in the place seem to
feel that English is a language that is
worth their while. A few attempts at
querying shop attendants over what
something was, resulted in hilarious
miscommunications. Eventually the
Kenyan shop attendants offered
to help but by then I had already
decided that the oil in my basket was
sesame oil. Plus, it said so on the
sticky note on the shelf!
I thought I had curry powder, one
of the listed ingredients, at home.
Instead, my spice cupboard offers
up tandoori masala, coriander, cumin
and turmeric. Close enough. For the
sauce I was supposed to combine
light soy sauce with dark soy sauce.
I only have the latter and substitute
liquid aminos for the light sauce.
Close enough. But then the disaster
strikes and I am forced to start
my sauce afresh. No sesame oil. I
decide that at this point I don’t even
trust the soy sauce I bought, the
label states (in English) Hong Shao
Soy Sauce. Is that a special kind?
Anyway, I revert to my traditional
Kikoman sauce and mix it with
some red wine (the recipe called for
cooking wine), the aforementioned
aminos, some corn oil and a
tablespoon of sugar. Eventually, I
turn the noodles back on, pour my
new sauce in and manage to come
up with something that tastes fine
but has little resemblance to the
picture on the recipe.
Flavour-wise I have never actually
tasted Singapore Mei Fun, the dish
I am supposed to have made, so I
have little to go on.
I might have to give following a
recipe to the letter another try. I am
not ready to be defeated. However,
I am beginning to think that I
should start a video log recording
my misadventures trying to and
potentially failing at following
recipes.
21.