Cooking For The In-Laws

I'd like to think myself capable of whipping a decent meal in the kitchen. Maybe not cook it well enough to open up my own restaurant, or start my own franchise or anything like that... but definitely well enough for my fellow meal-eaters to swallow and not die. HAHA.


Having said that, I've cooked a good number of meals for The Fiancé over the course of our relationship. His younger brother was also at the mercy of my frying pan a few times last year when our time in Perth overlapped. Heck, I've even cooked for their mom once during my last trip there! But cooking for an entire family of in-laws? That's another story altogether. *stress*


I don't know what it is about the whole cooking-for-the-in-laws (or)deal lah. But even the mere thought of doing it scared the shit outta me. No kidding. I stressed about it for months! (Don't believe me, ask The Fiancé. He'll tell you I did.) Then I think I scared until I lau sai-ed the night it eventually happened. -_-'''


It was unplanned. I was unprepared. But things just... happened! And before I knew it, I was tossed a newspaper cut-out recipe, along with truckload of raw meat and vege, then left to feed the family without supervision in someone else's kitchen. Die! So... I cooked. I cooked like my life depended on it! *over-dramatic*

And in hindsight, I think I did alright although this dish was something I'd never cooked before. In fact, I'm not even a Western cuisine kinda girl in the kitchen to begin with so this could have totally turned out to be a hugggeee leap into hot stew for me. Haha. Quite literally. Cos I ended up cooking a Simple Beef Stew. =)

And simple it was indeed!
But I'll let the pictures do the talking.

 Boiling the beef in a pot till tender after leaving it to marinate for an hour.
(No pictures of the beef marinating, unfortunately. Totally forgot about it.
Was probably too stressed then to even think about blogging. HAHA.)

 

 Vegetables all cut and ready to be tossed into the pot.

The view inside the pot. This is what it looked like as soon as

the vegetables got thrown in. Minus the lettuce and the tomatoes,

of course. Those always go in last cos they turn to mush pretty quick.

 After being left to stew on a low flame for another hour and a half.

By this time, the tomatoes were definitely already in the stew

but I don't think I tossed the lettuce in yet. Forget liao. :-/

The final product – Beef Stew!!  =D

Beef Stew on Spaghetti. I wouldn't have minded it on rice, too. =p

This was really a surprisingly easy dish to cook. And to be honest, I didn't follow the recipe much when it came to the ingredients. Semua pakai hentam aje. Some more, some less, some guessed. Hahaha. But hey, it turned out fine so I guess my chin chai lai method works well enough. =p

 
One thing though: Just gotta remember to time the cooking properly so I don't leave it to boil that long the next time around. I could hardly find a good chunk of potato to eat cos most of it disintegrated into the stew already! *pouts* Other than that, I'd totally give myself a pat on the back for this attempt at Western cuisine. *shameless*

Anyway, here's the newspaper recipe
should you want to try it for yourself. =)

Simple Beef Stew newspaper cut-out
provided by my Future MIL. =)