Cooking

It is a well known fact that I love to work,  but I do have hobbies and interests and passions outside of work.  One of those passions is cooking.  I love to cook and especially love cooking for other people.

Lately cooking in my kitchen has become an even more welcome break at the end of the day ,   there is a new ingredient, that would be Peter Guo my friend from China who has taught me a whole new way to cook, not only ingredient wise, but socially.  I am learning to cook Chinese, not American Chinese but actual true Chinese cooking.  It is a entire culture that involves so much more than the actual cooking part.

It is Friday night and a couple   friends drop- in…we all make a dish…in the kitchen together we glide like a well oiled machine…olive oil and sesame oil….

We chop for each other, we get ingredients…dishes and vegetables are being passed around.wine is poured…languages are translated.  Peter is from Henan, (source of river,  is the meaning)  because the yellow river crosses through his province, the mother river  near middle  China….and as he is explaining to me now about where his province is we have an English lesson…Henan has .01 billion population

It’s so wonderful to live in this new culture.  Every word has a meaning and so I need to learn it all as we work to understand each other.   Did I already say it is so wonderful to live in this new culture.

Every  meal  conversation ends in a geography lesson, the atlas comes out, laptops are always on hand (one in Chinese) I am watching cooking shows in china and learning to cook based on sight  not words,  and one in English because of course I do not yet read Chinese and still like to cheat occassionaly.

In China each person makes a dish,  so tonight I am trying a new dish Crispy baked Basa, (Vietnamese Catfish)   Peter is making something that he cannot tell us what it is (it is his invention), ground pork made with hoisin sauce,  and wrapped in tofu noodle with fresh red pepper and cucumbers.

Susanne,  rice pilaf,  sauté dry brown golden pasta,  tbsp butter,  melt,  chopped onion, sauté a couple minutes,  add 1 cup long grain rice and pinch of sea salt stir and add one and a half cups chicken broth, Boil,  the simmer for fifteen minutes, then sit for five (I write this down mostly so I will remember).

 We are already planning tomorrow’s trip to the market to get our ingredients for fresh Sushi.

It’s good

Joan Culbert
Pinksky Productions