It is embarrassing to admit that I have never learned to cook. When I met my husband, I could not even boil an egg correctly. I felt very lucky that I finally found a good man who didn’t care about my lack of cooking skills. I enjoy being my husband’s assistant in the kitchen and have learned to boil potatoes and veggies and make a good mango float.
Making salads and toasting pieces of bread are some tasks I can handle fine and my omelets are getting better. After two months in Europe without my mother’s cooking, my longing for Filipino food triggered my cooking instincts. At first, I felt clueless about what to do since I have never cooked any Filipino dish. I looked around the kitchen and got afraid. I could have asked my husband to help me, but he doesn’t know how to cook Filipino food, and I wanted it real Filipino.
I tried to remember a simple dish from my childhood and checked out items in the kitchen for suitable ingredients. I could not find the exact ingredients. There was no pumpkin, but there were two eggplants. No snake beans but there were bell pepper, onions, and mushrooms. Instead of fish flakes, there were sausages. And I could use Worcestershire sauce instead of fish sauce. I tried to remember how my mother did it and when I first started, it was surprisingly easy. But would it taste good?
The serving time came and my surprised husband liked it very much. I could see in his face that he was honest. I was very happy with my cooking and ecstatic because I have discovered that I can do it if the desperation is big enough. It was so good that I forgot to take a picture of it. We ate up all at once. LOL.