the cooking adventures of the barefoot dukessa (aka kitchen goddess)

who would have thought that the seemingly long wait for that elusive perfect job actually has an upside? you see, there are times when i am just too bored to death, too hungry, but too lazy to get out because of the heavy rain that more often than not causes flooding and heavy traffic that sometimes i am forced to experiment in my temporary shelter's tiny kitchen just to satisfy my cravings.
now please lower your eyebrows. i know that it's no secret that cooking is the least of my favourite household chores. cleaning is. you can ask me to scrub, brush the floor, kitchen counter, bathroom tiles, wipe the dusts off on books, cds, dvds, but you can never beg me to cook.
first off, my cooking skills are very limited (i grew up with dozens of maids at our palatial antique home to do my every bidding, including tasting my food before i eat them).
second, i am not a fan of shopping for food. can you imagine me making timbang the fish even if it's norwegian salmon, the veggies, the pork, the chicken, the tomatoes and the onions? i would rather die than be photographed doing those things.

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but boredom (and hunger too) has its surprises. desperation is the gay fairy godmother of all innovation.

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one rainy day, i was so hungry but noticed that there was nothing to eat in the refrigerator, except for the frozen pork and chilled veggies that my sister left behind when she and her kids went back home after  a short vacation in manille (read: shopping, eating, swimming at the pool, malling). i tried calling up restaurants and fast food chains, but it seems that whoever was picking up those phones were either too busy (it took them hours, dahlins,  hours to answer the freaking phone) or they were deaf or they can't understand my british, visayan english that i had to repeat several times what i was trying to order. now, you can't be mad at these people over the phone because god knows what they might do to your food. goodness, i have heard several horror stories from my former lovers who had worked in fast food chains before on the unspeakable things that they used to do on the food of customers who are too snooty! afraid.

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there i was, hungry. totally mad at those phone operators of restaurants who can't understand the way i pronounced my order (when i asked for fried rice, they said what? can you repeat again please. you mean pork adobo? bungol!)
so what's a damsel in distress to do? call superman? no way, jose. i am a modern day woman. i am my father's daughter. i was never brought up to depend on any man to survive, for my happiness, much less to be able to eat lunch.
(confession: i always thought that i would be so rich someday that i can actually hire those gorgeous naked chefs to cook for me in my italian inspired kitchen. please see photo above.)
so instead of crying and blaming my mother for not forcing me (and punishing me when i refuse) to learn how to cook, i decided to experiment. i mean, how difficult is it to cook rice, pork sinigang and pork adobo on a rice cooker. i have seen my mother, sisters, the maids do it effortlessly, why can't i?
if i can understand, analyse and write up a decent report on  the complicated economic data on gdp, inflation, interest rates, bonds, why can't i cook? cooking, i believe, is not exactly earth science! (or was it rocket science?)
plus, i was bored and hungry to death. so at least there was something i could do that would take my mind off food and the summer of my discontent for a while.

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summoning my inner kitchen goddess (think nigella lawson in marc jacobs), i sank into my barefoot dukessa persona and tried my hands at cooking.

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* the rice -- now the label says for every cup of rice, you have to put one half cup of water. easy right? now the only problem is, how much is one cup of uncooked rice translates when already cooked. will it be equivalent to one cup of cooked rice like those served in fast food chains? i simply can't decide. honestly, i have no idea. but since i am a believer of more is more (not less is more), i decided to cook four cups of rice on the rice cooker.
of course i know the basics. i washed the rice four times with water, and was even tempted to use the dishwashing soap and the downy just to make sure it's clean and smells nice when cooked.
to make the story short, after the rice was cooked, i discovered that four cups of uncooked rice is really a lot. i mean, it can already feed six to eight people. who would have thought that those tiny grains would really expand and grow once cooked?

now the more tricky part.
* pork sinigang. if i remember it right, my sister had the following as ingredients: red tomato, onions, green siling labuyo (or jalapenos), pechay (sounds a bit naughty) and tamarind. good thing i had them in the ref minus the tamarind. but it's not a problem, i can always use knorr sinigang sa sampaloc  mix. (this portion is brought to you by knorr, the cooking mix!)

first wash them in the water. but of course. then chop.
first on the green chopping board were the tomatoes. the redder they are, the more difficult to chop them because i don't want to destroy their beauty. i mean look at them. they looked so perfect. but i had no choice or else i would die of hunger. then the onions. then the pechay. you don't chop the jalapenos, you just remove both ends. (i don't know why, but that's how my sister does it).
next, boil the water. once it's boiling, put the pork. wait until the meat is tender. but if your teeth are as sharp as the saw, then you don't need to wait until  the meat is soft and tender. right? once it's tender, you put the ingrediends: onions, jalapenos and tomatoes. wait for another five minutes then put the pechay. once the pechay is cooked (how will you know? try biting it, ok?), add the knorr sa sinigang sa sampalok mix. let it simmer for another minute or two.
taste it just to see if the sourness is alright. if not, add more knorr. if it's too sour, add more water.
then presto, you have the pork sinigang.
easy, right?

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not quite right. when i tasted the soup, it was too spicy. i realised that i may have put too much jalapenos on it. so what to do? simple. i put more water and wait for it to boil again.
after fifteen minutes, the pork sinigang was ready.
excitedly, i put rice on the plate and the sinigang on the bowl. only to realise that while the meat was now so tender after letting it boil for an hour or more, the pechay was unrecognisable (lamog na lamog sa sobrang luto) and did not taste like vegetable anymore.

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but since i had no choice, i ate them. in fairness, masarap sya. lasang sinigang talaga. you can do no wrong with knorr talaga. hahaha.
anyway, it was only my first attempt at becoming a domestic goddess.
who knows, if i get better at this and expand my repertoire to include pork adobo, menudo, pinakbet, pansit, i will become the philippine version of nigella lawson. oh, can you imagine having a popular cooking show on teevee, books, endorsements, millions of adoring fans, lots of cash, but please minus the abusive even if he is rich husband. scared!

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that's all bitches, witches, princesses, fairies!
(fotos not mine; all taken from different websites. no copyright infringements intended.)