Surprise Dinner

am utterly overjoyed to let you know that I have recently graduated my M.Sc. in Engineering in Physics and Nanotechnology (more on that later!), and I could not be happier! I am truly excited for my future and what I can contribute to science and technology. However, this post is actually about something unrelated to science; namely, cooking. I have previously mentioned how much I like to cook. More and more, I found out that I actually love to cook for Krissy.

There is something so satisfying to see her enjoy the food I make, whether it is something that takes a while to prepare, like butter chicken, or something simpler like a heartwarming bowl of salmon don buri. She inspires me to cook different things, and of course I just want to give her the best. It is all worth it when I see her get wide-eyed and ravished by whatever I have concocted in our hobbit-like kitchen. And when she is away, I actually find my inspiration and motivation to cook something delicious dwindling. When she visited her parents for a week, I remember that the blocks in my food pyramid were quickly transformed to comprising only canned foods.

So when I can cook for her, I try to do my best. I am not a “follow a recipe to a T” kind of guy. Usually, I look for several recipes of the same dish and just mix them up, taking the strengths of each one. If the gut feeling says one recipe has it all, then I stick with that. When I cook for others, and especially for Krissy, I always remember key ingredients: a dash of instinct, a teaspoon of creativity, a stick of fun julienned, 1/2 cup of soul, and a whole lot of love. These are always key to a successful dish happy tummy!

Krissy was at work Sunday, and I thought it would be awesome to surprise her with some delicious dinner. She has often come home from work with a headache, and feeling exhausted. The plan was to make her feel more relaxed after work. I had decided on vegetarian vietnamese spring rolls for Sunday night and pad thai for Monday night – I just know she will love these! Alright then, let’s get cross-cultural up in here!

For the spring rolls, I used this recipe for Marinated Tofu Fresh Spring Rolls with Peanut Sauce. I will go ahead and say that I am quite the sushi roller. However, when it came to rolling these wraps, the first 3 were a disaster. As I got into the groove, the rolls got more firm and the contents didn’t spill out as I cut them in half. 

It was quite the success! We were stuffed by the time we finished everything on the board. Also, it was a nice exchange of not having any meat, since the night before, we had our fair share of meat at a BBQ party!

As for Monday evening, it was pad thai on the menu. I had never made it before,  so I was curious to find out whether I would succeed. I used several recipes, but the main idea comes from Pad Thai Recipe: The “Authentic” Version. The author thoroughly describes what it takes to make the dish. There is actually a ‘prequel’ and ‘sequel’ to this recipe: a detailed outline of what the dish isn’t and a number of variations to the dish, respectively. So I was not able to get exactly the ingredients mentioned in the recipe, eg. preserved turnip, dried small shrimps, garlic chives. I had to adapt with what was available. I added chicken as extra protein. It was comforting that I had at least managed to get a hold of the exact ingredients required for the sauce – I believe it’s so important for the dish. Also, we cook on a stove top, and so it is near-impossible to do proper high-heat stir frying, but there are tricks to get around those issues. The end result was pretty amazing! And Krissy was very happy with it, so that makes me :))))

I will definitely be cooking this again. Practice makes perfect.

[Sorry for the super terrible phone pictures.]

// Gideon

Ps. I really enjoyed making the cover photo for this post, and so I hope you all like it, too. ( ﾉ^ω^)ﾉﾟ