{"id":48,"date":"2008-02-10T21:49:14","date_gmt":"2008-02-10T13:49:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chekyang.com\/musings\/?p=48"},"modified":"2008-02-10T21:49:14","modified_gmt":"2008-02-10T13:49:14","slug":"%e2%80%9cif-you-can%e2%80%99t-take-the-heat%e2%80%a6%e2%80%9d","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/2008\/02\/10\/%e2%80%9cif-you-can%e2%80%99t-take-the-heat%e2%80%a6%e2%80%9d\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cIf you can\u2019t take the heat\u2026\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One of those things that\u2019s fun to think about is how the both of us are very different when it comes to cooking in the kitchen. Ling is the more inventive cook at home. She\u2019s interested in trying out new recipes all the time, whether it\u2019s a Green tea cake (her own version of the Macha cake from Bread Talk?), or some Japanese cuisine. Check out her Chicken Donburi pictured here for instance. Quite a magnificent attempt, and tastes as good as the real thing from a Japanese restaurant.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" id=\"image443\" src=\"https:\/\/chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/01\/2007-Rivervale-CIMG2913-chicken-donburi.JPG\" alt=\"2007-Rivervale-CIMG2913-chicken-donburi.JPG\" align=\"right\" \/>On the flip side, our dinner times become variable whenever she\u2019s the chef for the night. When she says dinner\u2019s at 6 we\u2019d be lucky if it gets done at 7 pm sort of thing.<\/p>\n<p>Food planning also takes a hit. The fridge is typically stocked with left over condiments and food items that get neglected all too soon. Too often, I\u2019ll pull an item out from the fridge and the dialog will typically go like this:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cDear, you know your bottle of milk has expired already right?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEr, I was supposed to use it for baking\u2026 sorry hor, just throw for me.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>In comparison, I\u2019m less adventurous when it comes to trying out new food items. I\u2019m really more interested in perfecting known recipes. Take for instance my Carbonara that Ling loves. Now, that recipe got perfected over 3 years cooking it in Perth. And I\u2019ve got the cooking time zeroed down to a personal best of 22 minutes from start to finish, everything included &#8211; pasta cooking + onion and bacon + prawn shredding + gravy work.<\/p>\n<p>Oh, I do try out a new recipe on the rare occasion, but only when I\u2019m positively certain I can do it without error, with low cost, and with minimal cooking time. And I\u2019m really only interested in Italian and Chinese stir-fry cooking. When I\u2019m doing stir-fry for dinner, Ling will give me that sort of look (i.e. \u201cStir-fry french beans again\u2026?\u201d).<\/p>\n<p>All that said, I shouldn\u2019t complain too much, since the stuff Ling can put together is always worth the wait and occasional food wastage. So, when she has time and the inclination, there\u2019ll always be something new on the dinner table. When we\u2019re having a busy week with too much work, it\u2019d be stir-fried french beans with carrots, capsicum, baby corn and fish cake, with a start to serving time of 20 minutes &#8211; I\u2019m still working on it! <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-smiley\" src=\"https:\/\/chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-includes\/images\/smilies\/icon_smile.gif\" alt=\":)\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of those things that\u2019s fun to think about is how the both of us are very different when it comes to cooking in the kitchen. Ling is the more inventive cook at home. She\u2019s interested in trying out new<\/p>\n<div class=\"entry-read-more\"><a class=\"read-more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/2008\/02\/10\/%e2%80%9cif-you-can%e2%80%99t-take-the-heat%e2%80%a6%e2%80%9d\/\">Read More<span class=\"cleanwp-sr-only\">  \u201cIf you can\u2019t take the heat\u2026\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,14],"tags":[124],"class_list":["post-48","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-at-home","category-recipes","tag-cooking","wpcat-6-id","wpcat-14-id"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}