My Cooking Disaster

Let me start by saying this: I can cook! And i really believe that i cook well.

With that said, let me tell you guys what happened this past weekend. Let's just say i did something childish so schmuck was a little mad at me (but we're ok now). So i decided i'll make it up to him that weekend and make him dinner. I wanted him to see my effort to please him so i decided to cook laing which is his favorite. Since i've never cooked laing before, i asked a friend how to make it then figured that since i can cook basically anything, then this would be an easy task for me.

So left the place like 10AM to buy ingreadients, went to Choitram's (Bur Dubai) first but the taro leaves proved to be a hard find. So they told me that I can buy them at Karama. So off to the bus stop, which is mind you not a very happy walk as it was a scorching 35'C then, plus buses going from Bur Dubai to Karama was kinda scarce (or was it? maybe only that day..)

So I was able to get the ingredients, but i bought coconut milk in cans as it'll be hard to look for grated coconut here (there are freshly grated ones but walking to where they sell those is not in my agenda (again: it's so f***king hot!).

So with my ingredients in tow, i went back to my place, it was like 11:30am already then, prepared everything and started cooking. We'll it started out fine, but when i have finished adding up everything, i looked at what i had made and that was when i realized something's wrong. I remember schmuck saying before that he wanted his laing dried and oily, coz as the coconut milk dries up, it releases oil or something. But mine doesn't look oily at all, well it won't dry up, it's still swimming in coconut milk, so i thought okay a few more minutes in fire will actually dry it up, but after minutes of cooking, it's still not dry, it was creamier now, no actually it's pasty.. but not dry. I ended up overcooking it, arghhh..

Anyways, dinner time came, i brought my laing to schmuck's place, cooked him porkchops to eat with it. While waiting for him, i developed a terrible headache which i think was brought about by overly thinking about what his reactions to the laing will be, plus i think i kinda dehydrated myself cooking in a non-airconditioned kitchen for 2hours.

Schmuck came, schmuck ate... We'll he said it actually taste good (i believe he was sincere when he said that), he doesn't care if it's pasty, it's just that there's something missing, a certain "zing" as he calls it. Turned out after further deliberation that he's looking for the spicy "zing" of ginger which i didn't know is one of the things you put in laing.

We'll at least he ate it and even packed some for his lunch the next day. But i know the next time i try my hand at this laing, it'll gonna be perfect, just as long as schmuck will manually get the milk from the grated coconuts for me. Actually schmuck and I cook better together, we prepared the perfect pan-fried salmon with lemon butter sauce last thursday hehe..

(note: us after eating dinner, hehe.. why that face schmuck? hehe)