How I started my cooking journey and how you can too Part 2
Written By: Gen Nguyen | Read full profile
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Joke of the Blog: What kind of cookies do pirates eat?
As mentioned before, I didn’t stop cooking after Nick left for college. It was probably around this time that I started actively cooking and building my recipe collection.
The summer after sophomore year high school, I lived with Nick at Berkeley and I wrote about my experience which you can read about here. It was the first time I lived without my parents and without an accessible cafeteria. I used to attend summer camps (Sam Houston Summer Orchestra and PAI) but they each had a cafeteria that would feed me as long as I went during opening hours. This summer camp was a little different. It was summer school.
I had to live like a college student and feed myself (and Nick and Chris) because if I didn’t cook, I starved (or until Okra fed me). I’m not writing this off as a bad experience though. Because it helped me develop my skills and I got to learn new recipes. Thank you Okra!
During my first year at Berkeley, my brother’s kitchen was too small to fit more than 3 people. It was also really old looking, janky and dirty. Literally, grease would fall from the ceiling fan onto the stove and sometimes into our pot. But we had to work with what we got. Although as danky as it was, it was the kitchen where I first successfully cooked spinach sauteed in garlic and having it taste exactly like Sinh Sinh’s dau miu (snow pea leaves sauteed in garlic sauce). I was so proud of my creation I told all of Nick’s roommates to try what little of it was left.
And the success didn’t stop there. I ended up learning how to cook kimchi fried rice and can I say it was BOMB DOT COM… the first time making it. Our second attempt, we cooked it in batches so that Okra’s family could eat some too (we were visiting her family that weekend). Because we cooked it in batches, the proportions were a little off and some had either too much spam, not enough kimchi, or was dry (not enough kimchi juice). That failure wouldn’t be the last time I cook kimchi fried rice though. In fact, it motivated me to experiment and find the sweet spot to make the perfect dish!
Second summer at Berkeley was a little different because Nick and Okra moved into a different apartment with a bigger kitchen! Yay!
My proudest dish that summer was pasta. I kid you not, before Berkeley ‘15, I had never cooked pasta without parental supervision. Most of the items were already prepped (pasta in a box, sauce in a jar, sausage pre-packaged), but successfully combining the ingredients together after only watching how it’s prepared gave me the kind of gratification you get when an Asian parent acknowledges your accomplishments.
One night we went out to the only open Asian supermarket in one of the most ghetto areas around Berkeley to buy ingredients for tteobokki (spicy rice cakes). We had to buy fresh rice cakes or else it wouldn’t taste good. So, for dinner that night, Nick and Okra made tteobokki as I watched. Okra did most of the cooking though. Nick was yelling out directions. I don’t remember exactly how it was made, but I remember enjoying that moment.
If you’ve read this far, give yourself a cookie! Join me in the last part to see how I really became the creative chef-baker I claim to be!
Answer: Chips-Ahoy!
Posts mentioned:
My 1st Summer at UC Berkeley
My 2nd Summer at UC Berkeley