Culinary experiment

Time: 18:20

Since the idea of mango with fish first occured to me, it has quietly but insistently made itself heard. Slowly, the idea began to take root, expand.. what, how, do I dare... I decided on cod in the first instance (though I find salmon and mango interesting too), baked in tin foil. Yet my fear kept me back—my house oven isn't exactly working. And the idea persisted and became louder. Finally, I decided to bite the bullet, and have (rashly) volunteered to cook tonight's dinner for my housemates.

Cous cous, which I had previously obsessed over, still features. Mango cod with cous cous (and sundried tomatoes—another favorite. And this time I bought it from the Italian festival La Dolce Vita that was held at Olympia over the past week) is planned.

I bought the cod, the mango, exra cous cous... and had spent the past half and hour preparing it. And just as I was about turn the knob to heat the oven (I recall that is something that has to be done), I realise just exactly how lost I am. I don't have the faintest idea how to work our oven. The symbols next to our two oven knobs have worn away, I don't know which is the timer, which is the heater-knob. I have no clue if I need to switch the oven on, or if there is even a switch. I seem to recall us having a oven tray but I cannot locate it. We do not seem to have oven gloves and I am terrified of heat (one of the reasons I do not usually cook). I am completely lost. I am actually beyond out of my depth.

I have just gone down. And the oven is not yet heated up. There is something that is simply not working. I'll try to figure something out and see how it goes. Fingers crossed..

Time: After dinner

It was disastrous. My housemate had suggested putting the tin-foil wrapped fish into our giant pot and heating the pot up. I did that and left it alone while I cooked the other stuff. When I opened the pot to check on it, I noticed some juice/liquid had fallen onto the pot and was sizzling. In a bid to avoid burning the pot, I poured water into the pot, hence effectively steaming the fish rather than baking it. And by the time dinner was ready to be served and the fire turned off, the entire bottom of the pot had turned black—all the water had evaporated and the pot was covered with a thick layer of carbon. The cod itself was tasteless (despite me putting what I thought was too much salt) while the mango was over-ripely-sweet, so one could taste the sweet and the bland separately.

Meanwhile, I had bought extra cod fish to cook a separate dish in case the would-have-been oveb-baked cod got burnt. But I didn't quite have an idea of how to cook my plan B fish. I could have grilled it (we have a grill), but I didn't quite know how to use it, and frankly, didn't have the stomach to go through another round of worrying and figuring out. The same housemate suggested frying the fish. But I didn't season the fish long enough and didn't quite know how to fry the fish. Don't really know how to steam fish either (didn't have the ingredient anyway. Plus, it wouldn't go with the Mediterranean-themed cous cous). So I stewed the cod fillet in a curious mix of sundried tomatoes with dried chilli and garlic and had to keep asking my housemate: Can you tell me if it's cooked yet?

My favorite part of dinner was the cous cous really. And I rather liked the mango itself too. And the apricot tart that my housemates bought for dessert. Well, and also the microwaved broccoli. Everything but the fish basically.

Okay.. so clearly, the statement that I cannot cook whatsoever still stands. Or at least I can't cook Western food. In my defense, it would have definitely helped if the oven was working. But the key takeaway is that I am missing a key step between the fish and the mango. I need to find a way to season the flesh of the fish itself, or to let the mango sweetness infuse the fish. I wonder if it is a problem of marinating the fish long enough (I only prepared it half an hour before cooking), or that I have to season the fish separately, and what kind of seasoning is usually used for fish (excluding the standard Asian seasonings of soy sauce, ginger, garlic, chilli, assam, parsley, fermented black beans)

Or, in future, I could just not cook. My friend had volunteered to cook for me at his place, he said I worked hard enough all week to be cooking on weekends. But I declined saying I had promised to cook for my housemates. In future, I should just take his advice and chill out and be taken care of, or cooked for. THAT is the moral of the story.