Immature Chief

Hello!

I am an Indonesian living in Japan. I was not used to cook, because I have someone who will cook for me at home. Not every time, but most of the time. The only dish I can cook perfectly and I am very proud of is absolutely Mie Instan with extra black pepper, or white pepper.

Then I moved to Japan, and I have to cook due to halal issue (yeay!).

So what to cook?

Before I left home, I asked my mother what should I cook. She said that I can cook mie instan (well..), egg, sayur bayam, tumis, nasi goreng. Then she asked me to practice the theory on how to cook right with garlics, shallots, and salt.

However, I was a failure cook back then, but who cares? I had to go anyway, and I packed a little science on how to cook properly and brought it along with me.

Then I arrived in Japan. When I went to a supermarket, I realised that the only vegetables I knew were the vegetables with colours other than green. I had no idea about the physical look of spinach, the difference between kol (cabbage) and kembang kol (cauliflower), that kol (cabbage) and kubis (cabbage) are the same. But at least I could identify carrot, cucumber, paprikas, asparagus, potato, tomatoes, onion, and garlic.. And I knew that I could not find shallots everywhere! Oh my magic potion!

Yes, in Japan, there is no shallot. And no chilli pepper. No candlenut, no bay leaf.

We have to buy shallots online. And I did it. Because I don’t like to use onion to replace shallots. The magic can be lost.

Thai pepper is also available online.

And the mushrooms! We have many kinds of mushrooms here, but none has the same appearance with the mushrooms in Indonesia. Oh. My. God.

Cooking culture shock!!!!

And, I finally went with mie instan, telor dadar, telor orak-arik, sarden, fried salmon with asparagus or red reddish.
Telor ceplok? I could not make one until several tries.
Follow a recipe? I am frustrated with the words “tambahkan garam secukupnya”, not only garam. And the frustration to deal with some ingredients I could not find here. Gosh.
Nasi goreng? Thanks to Kokita.

But then again, I have to cook, and I do trial and error. My problem is that my first dishes were mostly a masterpiece of mine, and the second, the third, and so on, were and (hopefully not) will be a disaster. I made some masterpiece before: sate goreng. The one and only, it was not reproducible anyhow.

So, I made this page, as a log-book (last post on June 2016). Even though I can not always remember the exact amount of the things I put into the mixture. I even sometimes put too much salt, that’s why I named my tumblr “garamsecukupnya”, because I think I start to understand the essence of that wisdom words. And I have to engrave it in my brain, so I won’t put too much salt ever again.

See you later!