Saturday, September 19, 2009

[Hwangbo’s FUN FUN LIFE] The Kitchen is My Playground, I am Cook ‘Rapaghetti’


Whenever it was a night where my mother would be home late due to work, it was my responsibility to prepare the dinner table ever since I was in elementary school. Whenever my mother had to go out for something she handed the job of preparing the dinner table to me.

I would take out the left over side dishes and prepare a hot bowl of rice using the rice cooker. It wasn’t a very hard job.

However, a dinner table without a main menu seemed so miserable and cold, so I started to fry some eggs. When the plain fried eggs became tiresome I began making tamagoyaki, steamed eggs, egg fried rice, and after I’ve used up all the possible egg recipes, I made KimChiBokKumBap (KimChi fried rice), YangPaBokKumBap (Onion fried rice), I began expanding my abilities as a cook. It was always so much fun slicing up the onions, smooshing the garlic, and preparing the rice. It was like I was playing house.

When I was young I would only share a sentence with my father as our daily conversation, he was always a scary and tired person. So when my father would come home after finishing up with his work and finish the food that I’ve prepared and respond with a “that was very good.” I felt like I’ve just won the lottery, it made me feel extremely happy. On top of that my mother would praise me saying “Our daughter is so kind. You’re already a grown up!” The very reason I love cooking so much is probably due to these memories of mine.

However, the kitchen was always my mother’s kingdom. The only time I could cook was when my mother wasn’t at home. I’ve always cherished this time and used this time to create my own recipes using the various little scraps of food in the kitchen. Cooking isn’t hard, all you need to do is prepare something you want to eat. There were lots of times when I would create a big mess after these cooking sessions and get in trouble with my mother.

And by many times of trial and error, I’ve mastered the art of fusion cooking. My first mission was noodles. I used the instant ramen noodles to imitate spaghetti. First, I would boil the ramen noodles. Then I cooked  the ramen soup in a separate pot and after it started boiling I added about 3 tablespoons of ketchup. After thoroughly boiling the soup, I would combine the noodles with the soup and voila! It might sound disgusting, but actually it tastes pretty good. I would call my friends over and make this, they usually don’t know that it’s just instant noodles.

These are the various recipes I’ve enjoyed when I was young

Hot Bbang (hot bread)

  1. microwave a plain slice of bread to make the texture smoother.
  2. Put vanilla ice cream on it.
  3. fold the slice of bread over in half

and enjoy!

[t/n: 2 more recipes coming soon.]


author: HwangboHyeJung
translated by: iseuli
source: http://patzzi.joins.com/article_html/39100.html?aid=39100  

6 comments:

  1. thanks for this post..Now I know why Hwangbo became a very good cook. quite interesting.

    ReplyDelete
  2. thanks for this! but lol at the 'ice cream sandwich' recipe...it's not really a recipe in my opinion but good to know she likes those simple things :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hehe, Hwang Bo is always trying new things that is why she became such a great cook. I love how she invents her own meals. Interesting and her father being such a strict man. Her mom is right, her parents have such an amazing daughter.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I love this article. Its subject is so commonplace which make it and the writer all the more adorable in writing it. And I agree with Hwangbo, cooking is rather easy once you get the basis down and just want to make what you think will taste good to you.

    Thank you so much for this!

    ReplyDelete
  5. so this is a regular column by HB? cool!
    lol i'm going to try ramen-spaghetti now. ^^
    thanks for sharing!

    ReplyDelete
  6. great to have this blog...because i miss her teribbly...

    ReplyDelete