What happens when you live alone and you have zero culinary prowess

Before I came here to the UK, the only culinary experience I have involves frying hotdog, bacon and scrambled eggs. The only thing I could cook perfectly was rice – in a rice cooker. So basically, I am Jon Snow in the kitchen. I know nothing.

It was horrifying to have to face the kitchen on my own, an empty one at that too. Shopping for kitchen supplies was bad enough but cooking is a Japanese horror story in itself.

Back home, when my mom would call me to help out in the kitchen, I had a gazillion questions to ask before getting on with it. How big should I slice these: 1 inch, 25 centimeters, 38.4 millimeters? How should I slice it: lengthwise, crosswise, diagonal? How would I know if the meat is cooked: when it’s light brown, medium brown, golden brown or dark brown? I mean come on, there are so many Pantone shades of brown! Cooking was such a tedious process for me, it didn’t come naturally to me like drawing or painting or falling off the bicycle. Every gene in my body was rejecting it, and I just couldn’t be bothered with it.

But when I came here, I knew I had to do the impossible. I had to conquer the kitchen because well, I’m always hungry. So what happened?

The inevitable Adobo attempt

I started with the basic Filipino dishes. Naturally, adobo had to be conquered first. I googled adobo and I found ten different ways to cook adobo. I was outraged. How can you cook something so many different ways? I just chose the shortest recipe and got on with it. I followed the recipe right to the dot and I managed to produce something edible out of sheer courage, incredible hunger and virtual ingenuity (thanks Google!). It was a triumphant moment right there and I believe my culinary XP went up by 5 points.

The secret ingredient

I couldn’t keep cooking adobo so I ventured into the other parts of the unknown. I tried menudo, tinola, caldereta. The secret? Mama Sita. Thank God for Mama Sita. I seriously believe she is one of the most important people in history. If it weren’t for her powdered mixes, I wouldn’t have survived this far. I have Mama Sita mixes for everything: tinola, menudo, barbeque marinade, adobo, caldereta, chopsuey. If Mama Sita asked me to mix laundry detergent in my food, I would. It would probably taste wonderful.

Recipe Rescue

Sometimes I would ask my mom or my friends for recipes. Mostly though I get them from the internet. I’ve squandered a lot of money buying all sorts of ingredients I’ve never even heard of before. Social media has been very helpful in my kitchen growth too. I’ve saved ten thousand Tasty videos on facebook for safe measure.

It still is a tedious process for me. Cooking is very much like experimentation during high school science lab. A pinch of this, a dash of that, pan-fry this, boil that. But I learned that you don’t have to follow all the instructions to the dot, sometimes you can just make it up as you go along. My culinary XP has not gone up much since I came here but I can cook to survive now. If all else fails, there’s always the pizza delivery hotline. Adulting achieved.

P.S. It always takes me forever in the kitchen. Six hours cooking, 5 minutes eating and 19 days washing the dishes. So. Hard. To. Wash. The. Dishes. Is it just me?