Sunday, August 5, 2012

Know A Little About A Lot: Ingredients Management~

Alhamdulillahi rabbil a'lamin... We still able to perform our fast in a harmony way, free from any chaos, pressure and any other obstacles like what our sisters and brothers are facing in Somalia, Myanmar, Palestine, Syria and any other places that I can't state it all here. Sitting at home is such a bless, especially during this Holy Ramadhan since there's a lot of things can be learned, which I strongly believe that the knowledge is really important to be applied in our daily life :) Thanks to the future employer for the utmost considerations :))) Allah says wait, and He gives better ^^

Menu Preparations

I do believe that menu preparations is quite important since it consumes much of our time rather than to cook and to eat the menu itself. If you were asking me, I would try to minimize the time as much as I could especially during this month. As for myself, I starts to prepare the food to be cooked at 3.30pm (considering we are having our iftar at 6.30-7.00pm here and I want to stop for about 30-40 minutes to perform my Asar & recite Al-Mathurat), and try to ensure all the cooking to be done by 6.00pm. 

Planning the menu is quite important or else you'll be in trouble (like cooking still not done by iftar time or you will need to put lots of times everyday in order to prepare for the menu). From my reading and my experience, in term of preparing the basic ingredients such as onion, garlic, ginger, chillies, turmeric and galangal, there are two ways to do this express preparation; one is by weekly estimation and another one is by on the spot estimation. Among this list, I think the ingredients that we used the most are onion and garlic, unless you love to cook a menu that I would consider as complicated (since it consists of many ingredients) everyday.

Taken from Google Image
Weekly Preparations

If you are fall under those who wish to cook everyday for dinner (assuming that we are all working during the day), this type of preparation is much more easier. What you need is to plan for the whole week menu, and just prepare the basic two ingredients (blend them) for one week usage. Separate them while blending, and put each in one close container and leave it inside the fridge. However, for now, I can't practice this since my mom disagree as she prefer to have a fresh one (peel off the onion & garlic on the spot). Plus, she have me  to prepare for it everyday, so she still not consider this type of preparation. Hewhew~ (="=)

On The Spot Preparations

This is the type of cooking preparation that I am currently practicing in this housewife academy (sounds bombastic?) Hewhew~

What I need to do is basically an almost accurate estimation of amount of ingredients that need to be used in my cooking. Let say on that day I am planning to have sweet and sour fish, mixed vegetables, and sambal cuttlefish, what I need to do at the first place is add up the amount of garlics, onions, chillies and any other ingredients needed, then peel off all of them. After that, start blending the ingredient that will be used in all the menu that I've planned to have, then take off some of the ingredients that is allocated for the simplest menu (need only basic ingredients such as onion & garlic only), then put another ingredients that is needed for more complicated menu (more ingredients) into the blender. By practicing this, you will save more time not only in term of preparing the ingredients, but you can skip rinse the blender as well. And if you keep on practicing this, you will contributes in term of water saving :)))

The Knowledge of Ingredients Estimation

I remember when I started to learn on how to cook, I would ask "Mak, bawang merah berapa? Cili berapa? Bawang putih berapa?" everytime before I cook. And as time goes by, I can say that I can do the estimation more accurate. :)) However, there are some type of dishes that I still really can't understand on  how to estimate the amount of ingredients to be used due to I rarely do that dish or it's too complicated that I will leave my mom to do it. Hewhew~ I can conclude that besides looking at the recipe, experience in kitchen will help us so much in estimating the ingredients to be used in preparing the menu.

Hope this Ramadhan will be a better platform for us to improve ourselves in every aspect of life... And I hope, I could be a better person from day to day ^^.

~berdoa dan terus mengharapkan redha Illahi...~

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