Quay Po Cooks: risotto

Showing posts with label risotto. Show all posts

Monday, June 4, 2012

Impatience can cost you

Don’t you hate it when someone rings the door bell continuously and when you rush out, the person is already getting ready to “cabut” (leave)? ARRG!! I shouted for him to come back and told him that he had to allow time for old people to respond lah. Instead of giving me a smile or acknowledging what I told him, he stared at me as if I was an alien, or perhaps he thought this old aunty was talking too much and was wasting more of his time? His stare told me to hurry up and sign the receipt. I felt like being naughty. LOL!Know what I did? As I was taking my own sweet time signing the receipt, I gave him some advice. I told him that old people's hand shakes a lot so cannot be fast and I also have to take time to think what my identity card number is. So he has got to be patient. I could see his face by then, it was soooo looong that it could have almost touched the ground. He had no choice but to keep silent and wait patiently. I guess he wished he had not hurried me in the first place. Hopefully, this guy learned not be so impatient and realised he did not save anytime by being so. On the contrary, he had wasted more time setting off this long winded, slow moving Aunty Lucy. LOL!

Let me make a confession. I used to be a very impatient person myself but as I grow older and wiser, I have improved because I learned that impatience can cost me.

In the past, I often tried to engage in more activities in the allotted time than I could handle. By the same token, I did not allocate enough time for the things that needed to be done. I did not like to wait for things to materialize so I failed to spend adequate preparations to have a satisfactory result. I got upset easily if things did not happen soon enough. When I got impatient, usually, I appeared curt, abrupt, hasty, and presumptuous when I spoke. Due to my impatience, it appeared to others that I was impolite and not a nice person to be around. Not a good way to win friends.

So, to be patient is definitely a better choice in life. Due to my being patient that day wondering how to use up the "hitam masak" paste given to me by my good friend, Arthur of Still Crazy All These Years when I went to Sibu few months ago, I took time to carefully look through what ingredients I had on hand and came up with a delicious fusion dish for lunch. This resulting dish satisfied both Asian and Western paletes so Quay Lo and I were happy. With a little more patience, I managed to take some nice photos of the dish to share with you. Being patient does draw positive energy and emit the same, agree?

Saffron Risotto with chirizo and hitam masak prawns

This dish is featured on Asian Food Channel (Official) Facebook page on 10th Octobeer 2012

Ingredients:

1 box instant saffron risotto

4 chorizo

1 medium onion, sliced

6 medium prawns, deveined and remove shells

1 heaping tablespoon hitam masak paste,
1/2 tbs for marinate prawns

Stir fry vegetables of your choice

Method:

Marinate the prawns with 1/2 table spoon ofr hitam masak paste for 1/2 hour in the refrigerator. To make the Risotto, follow the instruction on the box. Pot some holes in the chirizos and fry till cooked. Heat the wok with 1 table spoonful of oil. Add onion and fry till translucent. Add hitam masak paste and stir well with the onions till fragrance. Add prawns and stir fry till cooked. Add cooked risotto, fried chirizo, hitam masak prawns and stir fried vegetable to the serving plate and serve immediately.

A LITTLE ABOUT THIS QUAY PO

Before I was married to my "Quay Lo" (Guaylo) husband, I did not know how to bake or cook. Subsequently I learned some baking and cooking Western cuisine from him, and providing his food for him launched an interest in cooking in general. Many of my Chinese friends and family told me that "Quay" is the wrong spelling for devil in Cantonese. The right spelling should be "Kwai" or "Guay". Well, somehow I like the spelling "Quay" better although I have to agree that it does not sound very Cantonese. Try asking a Westerner to pronounce "Kwai" and you will probably hear "Quay" haha. Whether is "Quay" or "Kwai" or "Guay, just know the devil woman is me when you see Quay Po Cooks. My hubby said if people pronounce "Quay" as "Key" is even better because I am the key to his heart. LOL!

Only now, have I started to learn the traditional Cantonese cuisine of my Mum. She cooks fabulously and all her specialties are divine. These two interests, my husband's Western food, and my mother's traditional food, prompted me to document them so they will not be lost.

Here, I wish to share my cooking and baking experience with my readers. I also hope to inspire those who do not know how to cook or bake to do so because, trust me, if I can, you can too.

Something I'd like to mention is that I find that many people are rather unwilling to share their recipes. However, for me, I think differently. I think good recipes should be shared thus allowing as many people to enjoy it as possible. Unless those recipes are for doing business, I don't see why we want to keep them all to ourselves. So if you are generous in sharing your recipes, you are welcome to share on my blog. Send the recipes to me and better still with pictures of the final products and I will be very happy to post them them with credits to you of course.

Our cuisine is a deeply embedded part of our culture. When two cultures come together under the same roof the results in the kitchen can sometimes be comedic, sometimes confrontational, but more often it is a journey full of surprises and discovery. There is joy in our food. If we think upon this, it is intuitively obvious. This blog is a journey of joy and sharing, reflecting what the French like to call "joie de vivre" (joy of living). No one could be more different from one another then my husband and my mother. Yet one thing they share in common is knowing intuitively that food, cooking, and sharing can be avenues of joy in life itself. So herein, help yourself, to a little joy and , if you like it, share it with your own family and friends. Joy is something that should be shared.