When I first arrived in London two years ago, I was jobless. Asuka was working to support us, so I had to cook. I thought since I was in London, why don't I give it a go to pick up some western cooking? I borrowed a few cookbooks by Jamie Oliver from my local library (one good thing about UK is the library is always free, and easy to sign up). The first western dish I made was roasted rainbow trout with thyme, and we liked it. The first success hugely encouraged me to carry on the learning. Plus as a China man, food is always a big part of enjoyment in my life.
Since then I have been cooking at most weekends, and getting more and more into western cooking. It turned out learning to cook not only made me eat well and healthy, but also over the course, has taught me so much about culture and language. As someone from a completely different culture background, this is truly interesting and beneficial. For example, I now know roasted beef and yorkshire pudding is a traditional British food; the Spanish uses saffron to cook paella; Cambernet is a French cheese, and is often roasted; and calamari is squid, and zucchini is courgette.
Over this xmas and new year, I'd made a few dishes, you can take a look at them at my flickr website.
As a city with a very high immigrant population, London is a fantastic place to get into cooking. The availability of all kinds of cooking ingredients, vegetable, fish, and meat is amazing. Nowadays, you can easily get a hold of ingredients of almost any major cuisine in a supermarket, or at your local ethnic shop, being it Japanese, Chinese, Thai, Indian, Italian, Vietnamese, or Greek etc. A large number of cookbooks get published every year in UK. The quality of these books are getting better and better each year. They consists of a good deal of pictures, so that you have a rough idea what your dish will look like before you decide which dish you'd like to eat, and many of them are written with the amateurs in mind. The truth is cooking is not that difficult as you might think.
So, when it is still not too late to make a new year resolution, why don't you make cooking one of them!
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两年前当我刚刚到达伦敦时，我是个待业者。明日香一个人工作支撑我们的生活，于是我就不得不在家做饭。我当时想既然我已经人在伦敦，何不尝试着学做西餐呢？于是我从我们家附近的图书馆借来了几本Jamie Oliver的菜谱书 （英国有一个好处就是图书馆总是免费的，办卡也很简单。）。我作的生平来第一道西餐是百里香(thyme)烤鳟鱼(trout)，我们都还满意。第一次的成功大大的鼓励了我继续学下去。再加上，作为一个中国人，吃饭是很重要的生活享受。
自从那以后，我基本上每个周末都会做饭，已逐渐变得对做饭越来越有兴趣了。结果我发现，学习做饭不仅使得我食的健康，美味，还教了我很多语言和文化上的东西。作为一个来自完全不同文化的人，这是很有趣和有益的。比如说我现在知道了烤牛肉和约克郡pudding是英国的传统食品；西班牙人用藏红花作Paella（一种用平底锅烹调的，西班牙海鲜米饭）； Cambernet是法国奶酪，经常烤着吃；calamari(意大利语)是乌贼;zucchini(美式英语)是西葫芦。
在圣诞节和新年期间，我作好几道菜。可以在我的flickr网站看到。
作为一个有着大量移民的城市，伦敦实际上是一个很棒的学习做饭的地方。能够找到的各种调料，蔬菜，海鲜，和肉类多的惊人。在超级市场，或是小的民族商店你几乎可以很容易的找到世界上任何一种主要的烹饪的调料，不管是日式料理，中餐，泰国菜，印度菜，意大利菜，越南菜，希腊菜，还是印度菜，等等，等等。。。每一年英国都有大量的菜谱书出版，而且质量一年比一年好。大多数书都有着大量的图片，所以在你决定在作哪道菜前，你已经知道做好后，你的菜大概会是什么样子。并且大多数菜谱书都是为业余爱好者而写的。事实上，做饭并不像很多人像的那样难。
趁现在还不是太晚做一个新年的抱负计划，为何不把做饭作为其中的一个呢？
不错，新时代的好男人:-)
Posted by: Jessie | 2007.01.23 at 11:56