The highlight for this week was that I went for a one session class to learn how to cook some Singaporean and Malaysian dishes. This does not seem to be the brightest thing to do considering I’m on a restrictive, fun extinguishing, liver detoxifying homeopathic diet. That aside, I planned for this class in January and I was determined not to miss it.
As usual, we were running late and I got in a flap and nearly missed the entire lesson altogether! Highly anal retentive by nature, I was completely thrown off by being plunged into the class half way rather than being able to ease into it. I felt like the kid who shows up late to her middle school talent show and starts the tuba off key in the middle of a group performance.
How did woe become me? P, my stiff upper lipped spouse, is notorious for his lack of punctuality. If he was a groundhog, folks would have to wait till June to see his shadow. In fact, when we got married, the only way I got him to church on time was by telling him that if I get there all dolled up and the priest is ready to go, I’m going to marry the best man if P is not there on the dot (yes, C.D. this is the fate that you escaped—sorry you had to find out this way).
Any old how, fifteen minutes before the class starts, P is nowhere to be found. It’s too late for me to hop on a bus, and the point is moot considering I was with our four year old, Lanes, who would most probably not be welcome in a class that involves frying, dicing, and slicing. P’s cell phone was off and I was really in a spin trying to figure out what to do. Should I stay or should I go? Should I yell or should I scream?
When I finally get through to P, he says he can’t drive because his pupils are dilated! I muttered that it was highly inappropriate for him to be scurrying around town with dilated pupils. He said when he tried to go in for an eye exam real quick before my class and the whole pupil thing was not anticipated. Hmm.
After much ado, between me being indecisive about being able to handle going to class mid-way and worrying about P driving with his challenged peepers, I was eventually jet propelled to my class after P promised me the optician said it was ok for him to operate a vehicle.
I was mortified to show up half an hour late. P takes these things in stride, and all but ejected me from my seat as I had a last moment bout of jitters. I’m way to uptight to deal with such things, but luckily the chef teaching did not notice and the folks right by the door quickly gave me their notes and tried to bring me up to speed.
In the end, I missed all the explanations about the recipes and I had no time to go over them. We had to form teams and start cooking right away! Chop chop. I didn’t know what was going on, and while I was standing in the middle of the room like a deer caught in the headlights, I was quickly absorbed into a group of rather efficient looking folks.
There were five items that needed to be made and five of us. My team consisted of a married couple and what I thought was a mother-daughter duo. Luckily, I didn’t make any comments like ‘oh I hope one day I can take a class with my daughter’ because it turns out they were sisters-in-law. So I narrowly escaped sticking my foot in my mouth.
I was not so much lucky with the other stuff. All of a sudden, everyone rushed to gather ingredients. I felt like I was participating in a challenge for the ‘Amazing Race’. So I followed the herd blindly. Fortunately, the married couple brought over all the meat and veggies, but in my hurry to keep up with the Jones’, and my exhaustion from the dieting, I was just not feeling focused.
Luckily, my teammates were happy go lucky folks that were constantly offering me encouragement. The married couple’s role in the team was to continually pepper their chicken curry and my poor soul with heartening words like, ‘it’s ok, it will be fine, these things happen’.
My mission was simple—to make chicken satays. Then came a series of accidents. I forgot to season the meat before marinating it because the ingredients for the seasoning were listed after the marinate. Or do you season after you marinade? Either way, no seasoning happened. Again, I had a flashback to the third grade when the teacher was reminding me to read all the instructions instead of just immediately following the first one.
Next, I forgot to soak my skewers (in my defense—it was not written in the instructions, but not so much in my defense, I would have heard the instructor saying that had I been on time for class). Then came my biggest mistake—I wound up putting two tablespoons of garlic and satay sauce into my mixture for the peanut sauce.
The lovely married couple gushed ‘oh but we love garlic, the more the better, don’t worry’. I don't know what Care Bear factory they came out of, but I was so thankful they were on my team. Bless them.
The team next to me had Attila the Mom, who was disapprovingly monitoring every action of every member of her group.
The team next to me had Attila the Mom, who was disapprovingly monitoring every action of every member of her group.
Instinctively, I thought two tablespoons seems like rather a lot, and even though my tired, food deprived eyes kept scanning the recipe, I was misreading it in the midst of all the chaos at our kitchen stadium.
After giving it all a nice mix, I realized that the recipe did indeed say teaspoons. Eventually, with the addition of more of another sauce by a very patient and good-natured teacher, it all worked out. These things only happen to me.
It turns out, you don’t just shove the chicken into the skewers, you have to twist and shove gently. I think the chef must have cottoned on to my clueless nature, because he anxiously reminded me that the bamboo was sharper than it looks and to please not stab myself. I wanted to add that on a good day, I was sharper than I look too, but didn’t bother because that day I was much like the cute but slow puppy in doggy training class.
It took me a couple of tries to twist the chicken just right. My germaphobic nature was making me worry about salmonella as I was manhandling those bits of chicken, and my anal retentive nature was complaining that my fingers were stained yellow from turmeric in the marinade.
I cautiously cooked the chicken, because the last thing I needed was to top off the evening with uncooked meat. When I was done everything, I suddenly discovered a major omission. My peanut sauce had no peanuts!
I was about to launch into my three hundred and twenty second panic attack of the evening when the nice married couple quickly told me that the instructor had said he was not allowed to bring peanuts into the building (the class was in a high school). Whew!
Surprisingly, the peanut-less peanut sauce didn’t taste like there was anything missing. Maybe all that extra garlic I put in numbed our senses! After cooking, we all sat down to eat our meal. I felt slightly better because team Attila the Mom had burnt some of their food and their curry turned out a peculiar shade of baby poop green.
I had to sit and watch everyone eat for the most part because I am not allowed to eat after 7pm. My teammates looked rather sad about that, so I took one bite of each of their food and offered the appropriate compliments and regaled them with fascinating facts such as if you spray Lysol on turmeric it turns pink! They instantly wanted to try that but we could not find any Lysol.
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