Summer Cooking
Over the summer I picked up cooking different dishes such as kottu, ramen, and pizza which was a fun experience that I could carry with me to college as we start to live by ourselves. Out of them all, I would say the pork ramen was the best as it had such a unique flavour which I loved.
Dish #1: Pork Ramen
With this dish, I boiled some noodles with around 200-500ml of water with soup base. While the noodles cooked, I defrosted and cut pork up into small pieces, cooking it with some olive oil, salt, seasoning and kecap manis (from Indonesia).
Dish #2: Seafood Ramen
With this dish, I changed it up with cuttlefish instead of pork and adding a kick of spice into the soup base! Unlike the pork, I had to clean the cuttle fish before cutting it. Personally, I’d take the pork over the cuttlefish as the texture and flavour was better.
Dish #3: Pizza
Cooking the pizza, I firstly defrosted the pizza dough and preheated the oven to ~180°C, applied pizza sauce and sprinkled on grated mozerella cheese. After cutting up the bellpepper and cucumber for a crunchy texture, I sprinkled those on too and sprayed olive oil. Nextly I placed the pizza in the oven and let it cook for around 10 minutes. I was happy with the result overall as it tasted amazing and was pretty easy and fast to cook.
Dish #4: Kottu
Another dish I cooked was Kottu with pork sausasges. I started with cutting the Parata into slices using scissors, slicing up the pork sausages, onions, iceberg lettuce, carrots and cucumber. After preparing all the ingedients to be cooked, I got the wok out with some olive oil and added everything to be cooked. Making sure I mixed everything evenly, I also added some salt, eggs and cheese to bring out more flavour from the dish.
Learning Objectives:
LO1: Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth
Throughout all the cooking, I ended up improving my cutting skills as I got more comfortable with the knife to cut pork, cuttlefish and vegetables. In order to grow, I would like to find out more ways to improve the flavour within the food, such as using garlic or oyster sauce. I would also like to try cooking with the air fryer for a crispy texture with the meat.
LO2: Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process
At first, I was really uncomfortable with cooking as I wasn’t sure how to cook it or how long to cook it. However, I overcame these hurdles by asking for advice from my mom and developped these skills such as cutting the vegetables myself.
LO3: Demonstrate how to initiate and plan a CAS experience
I took the initiative to cook for myself in order to learn necessary skills for preparing to live independently.
LO4: Show commitment to and perseverance in CAS experiences
From my last cooking experience, I took it further this time to expand my horizons by trying a variety of different dishes from ramen to pizza.