When I bought chicken quarters and ingredients like cloves and star anise earlier in the week to finally make Hainanese chicken curry, I thought I would just be cooking for myself. The logical day to cook fell on today, Good Friday, when everything around my apartment is closed. But ,um visited Toronto for 48 hours and she and Lil Sis stayed over last night. Just before coming home last night after a Ching Ming dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant in North York with three uncles, we dashed into T&T in their last 10 minutes of business and racked up $50 of groceries. That’s a lot!
Good Friday was a comedic day. We got up at 7 on very little sleep since I’m pretty excitable with so many guests and I didn’t get to see mum much this trip. Brought mum off at the airport where the three of us enjoyed a Starbucks together (a total rarity) and returned to the apartment to fell asleep until 4 in the afternoon! It was then time to start making dinner, well, starting at 6pm.
Preparing everything so it was mise en place and ready took 75 minutes! Then it took another 45 minutes to actually cook. It’s a bit of a joy cooking in my fancy big kitchen but I still don’t like cooking. People hear about what I make and assume I like cooking. I don’t. I like having control over what I eat. I like being self-reliant. But when I’m preparing food, I hardly feel joy. I don’t look to improve on recipes. I don’t care to learn the “proper” technique and hold a knife in an unwieldy manner.
So, this is what I made for an impromptu Good Friday Chinese meal….
Lotus root turkey soup I made a couple nights ago. First attempt ever cooking with this vegetable and it makes a satisfying soup.
Sauteed peashoots and garlic chives. Bringing together two of my favourite Chinese vegetables.
Hainanese chicken curry. Kind of just tasted like curry to me while I hoped some of the ingredients on the long list would confer Hainanese chicken flavour (if you know what I mean) but it was just a fancier Chinese curry, in my opinion.
The original reason we went to T&T last night, to pick up Melona bars for mum who doesn’t get them in Halifax (at least not for just $3.99 a box of 8)! I laughed and laughed as she enjoyed and gorged on them, polishing off three in one sitting!
On this day..
- Half a movie - 2006
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