Because I didn't have any experience cooking, I always regard myself as a bad chef. But after coming to U.S., kitchen has become my favorite room of my apartment (even though it's so small). Eating out is necessary and delighted, but the cost will be high compared to cooking at home. So, cooking is a good way to save my budget.
Well, you may think that cooking seems to be perfect, but, it's only true when you cook well and you really like your D.I.Y dishes, which is definitely not easy, as a novice in cooking.
I will just talk about my experience in cooking and learning how to cook, my successes and failures through learning. Only two months in U.S., I found myself improving dramatically in cooking. From the very beginning, I can only cook very simple dishes like dumplings and noodles. But now, I can cook very difficult Chinese dishes and I even have the confidence to invite my friends to taste my work.
Shopping for materials:
Before cooking, the most important part is to get all the ingredients, seasonings, raw materials ready. It's not a easy part because firstly, you can not always get what you want in a market; Second, don't forget you want to lower the costs so choose the right place and right thing to buy is not as easy as you may have imagines; finally, choose the good ones from a bunch of food there in the market is requiring a lot of knowledge about food. So, in a word, preparation is fairly important and it's never easy.
I usually buy food at two places, the first one is Fresh Grocer, at 40th & Walnut, because it's the nearest market where I can buy fresh food. However, the food and seasonings at Fresh Grocer is slightly more expensive than other markets. As the old saying goes, you can't have your cake and eat it too. So either compromise for the convenience or sacrifice the convenience for lower prices. Generally the stuff at Fresh Grocer are very good, so you can buy something that you need immediately there since it's close to campus.
Another place is the Asian Supermarket in Chinatown, yes, it's really far from the campus, but it's really good in two aspects that no other markets can compare. First and most important, you can buy things, especially seasonings and flavorings from Asian countries like China in that market. It's such a good feature because it enables us to cook the dishes in a "Chinese" flavor. Besides, the groceries there are cheaper than other markets. So, my solution is to go to Chinatown every two or three weeks and buy all the things that I need for the following month in one time. (Tips: don't forget to call a male friend to help you to carry the things, or you will be struggling all the way back.)
Food keeping and preparation
It's a seemingly very simple step but I made a lot of mistakes here. In the first place, you have to know where is the right place to keep your materials from being rotten and from mice. Apart from that, you have to be aware of the expiration date of the food. Don't keep the fresh food for too long. Finally, before cooking, you have to melt the food in the fridge from frozen, this may take a few hours so that you have to do it early before you cook.
Learning to cook
You can learn to cook via various methods. Most people will read recipe from internet or books. But I really recommend the way I learned because I think it's efficient, that is, to find a friend who's good at cooking and watch him/her cooking. It's really easy, because after you watch him/her cooking for once, you can cook yourself next time.
Well, I'm really a novice in cooking so I'm just trying to share some of my past experiences here. No matter how good the taste of your dishes is, the most important thing is the joy you get from the process of cooking.
And here are some pictures of dishes cooked by myself. I think it looks awesome myself, what do you say?
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