Culinary Adventures

After one month on low-budget cooking (i.e under $2 pax per meal), I switch to one month on an average student budget ($2-4 pax).

Lessons learnt during low-budget, high-speed, cooking over electric stoves:

1. Anything goes. Under $2 meals means buying the cheapest things available at the supermarket/market on that day.

2. If anything goes, then make sure your dinner buddies do not have high expectations, or cook western-style.

3. Why? It's pretty tough to cook western on a low budget here, because they derive their best taste from herbs ($2-4 a bottle), and the fact that dairy products like cream, butter and cheese are expensive here--unless you're content with fish and chips, or omelettes and potatoes. Chinese food, on the other hand, can taste pretty good from inexpensive things like soya sauce and oyster sauce, and of course there's always a huge amount of inexpensive processed stuff to choose from (fishballs, sotong balls, fishcakes, etc), while ham and sausages are considerably pricier.

3. In the spirit of anything goes: almost anything that's deep fried can be stir fried to save oil. This includes fish cakes, fishballs, but not won ton (unless you don't mind it being soggy). Anything with a flour coating should be deep fried or boiled in soup. Better yet, don't flour-coat at all. Stir fry. Even cornstarch and oyster sauce are not absolutely necessary for stir frying (if youre are really living on the margins of poverty, that is).

4. Rice can be cooked in the microwave (learnt this courtesy of a fellow budget chef) to minimize number of cooking implements needed (and save 70 dollars on a small rice cooker). It can also be cooked in a pot, as in the days before rice cookers, but requires more attention. Whether in microwave or pot, it is recommended to stir the rice up once it's three-quarters cooked (prevent a rice crust from forming in the pot and sogginess in bottom layer of container for microwaved rice).

5. If you don't have issues with a particular type of diet, then high carb and low protein meals are pretty cheap. Incidentally, that's a good diet for sports like floorball, which involves a lot of running over an extended period of time, so it suits me.

6. Pasta and tinned soup go very well together (unlike rice, pasta boils faster on the stove than in the microwave), for a quick alternative to instant noodles. One can of Campbell's tinned soup can make up to two or three such small meals.

7. Finally, leach unembarassedly off other cooking buddies (okay, I did exchange mushrooms for rice--I'm not that cheapskate).

Average budget:

I haven't really had time to cook on an average budget, except for two tries at chicken curry. The first try was low budget (with minimal spices) and it was rather tasteless. So went on to average budget instead, and got everything I needed for it, and used a different recipe. This time it was fragrant and tasty, though not very spicy. Likely the first time didn't turn out because I was a little nervous and didn't give the curry paste enough time to "pecah minyak."