Not ordinary food/dishes from some restaurants, but food cooked by myself here in Des Moines, Iowa.
You can hardly find any food with the Malaysian taste here. I once calculated how many restaurants we can go for meal after class, answer=4. KFC, Subway, McDonald's & China Place-a Vietnamese run Chinese restaurant. Sienzz! Of course there are a few more restaurants and coffee shops nearby unexplored.
You have little choices to choose from here around Drake. However sometimes lovely and generous friends will offer you meals at campus dining halls. They don't taste really well, but at least when you are out of idea on what to eat or cook, you get to fill your stomach. (for free!!)
This is why you have to be able to cook a variety of food, if not, you will bore yourself with your own cooking.
Of course, my cooking skills are improving day by day. Cutting, chopping, frying....No choice.
And I've got the chance to cook many kinds of dishes, some which I haven't even tried before but I was just amazed how confident I was when I was attempting them. None of them were really perfect, but at least edible. HOHO.
This was probably my 1st breakthrough. Chicken kebab aka American style Lightly Flavored Satay.
The chicken wasn't the very tasty and flavored satay we eat in Malaysia. My housemate and I was just inspired by the recipe card from Walmart and decided to cook it for our very 1st time for the Mooncake Countdown Potluck Night. Just put the chicken into the oven and DING! DOne!
I think they taste okay, but some of my friends are used to the "extra flavors" and found it a bit bland. 2816 continued cooking their trademark and specialty-Mushroom Chicken.
Then a few weeks later there's a Nasi Lemak Night which some of you might have seen from Facebook. This time, I was just providing the venue and I just cooked a simple ChoySum. The main dish that day was "Mr Kari" Sivabalan's NAsi Lemak and his extra spicy sambal.
They were really nice and everyone i think had fun. Maryanne cooked Fried Chicken, and Chiann cooked Minced Meat Tofu (I didn't take the photos of it, sorry!)
There are actually some more really special dishes cooked by us, but I didn't take photos of them. LOL. The most extravagant dish I cooked was Yong Tou Fu. Amazingly, we managed to make White Tofu, EggPlant, Taopok, Bitter gourd and Wantan. I think Justin took photos of them but I don't have any copy of them. I was busy for the whole night but to see all food finished was really satisfying.And then, sometimes I cook special dishes for myself. I tried different combination of spaghetti and noodles, and the only photo I managed to take down is this special ginger soy peanut spaghetti.
I put some crushed red peppers on it and it was so spicy until I nearly couldn't finish it.And then, just a few days ago, I cooked BAK GOR. Again, I don't know how to cook it, and I just simply cook it. it wasn't what I wanted, but at least it was again edible.
Next, and again a few days ago only, I cooked with 2816 (Kenneth, Brandon and Kun)and we managed to create a new specialty dish other than Mushroom Chicken under the name of 2816--KULUKAIYOK. it was our 2nd attempt and it was even better than the China Place restaurant.(photos not available at the moment!)
Hopefully, the list can continue to expand!
