The Story of my Life

1. Choose the items in your shabu-shabu platter - beef, chicken or seafood. Vegetable is a staple for every platter you order. The vegetable platter contains fresh homemade noodles, the fat and thin of noodles, vermicelli and egg noodle, Taiwan and Baguio petchay, beancurd, yam, black mushrooms and carrots.

2. Boil the soup at 150 degrees. When the soup starts boiling, it's time for the cooking to begin.

3. While waiting for this, you can start preparing your sauce. They will provide you with chopped onions, garlic, chili, spices and egg. What I do, I dump all the spices on the barbeque sauce, half of the chopped onions and garlic. I don't use the chili. The other half of the garlic and onion goes to the soup. To make the sauce thicker, I put the egg yolk in it, and the eggwhite on the soup.

4. Once the soup starts boiling, you may now start putting vegetables that takes a while to cook like corn and yam, and then the noodles. Next put in the meat, seafood. Vermicelli noodles, leafy vegetables, carrots, beancurd, meatballs should not be left boiling for more than 30 seconds.

5. You may put some of your sauce on the soup to add flavor.

6. Remember, eating and cooking may be done simultaneously. If you put the veggies last and the meat is not yet done, you may start with the veggies and so on.

And this is the happy bunch after a hearty meal at Healthy Shabu-Shabu.

Healthy Shabu-Shabu has branches in Podium, Bonifacio High Street, ATC, and SM North Edsa.

...trying hard, that is. hehehe

As earlier planned, I attended the Thai Cooking Class last week at Valle Verde. It was a very informal cooking class. Not like the ones where you'll cook the dish on your own. But for the price of P1,100, I'd say it was worth it.

The class was participated by househelp and housewives. Connie Reyes was even there! My friend, Roselle, tagged along so at least I had a companion the whole day.

We cooked the following Sticky Rice with Mango, Tom Yam, Steamed Fish with Lime Juice, Pad Thai and Bagoong Rice with Sweet Pork. Out of the dishes I cooked, I was only able to take a photo of this:

And that's because I ran out of battery...again. Please remind me to buy an extra battery next time!

One of the things the Chef stressed during the class was that to get authentic Thai taste, one must use authentic Thai ingredients. She said some of those ingredients are locally available, others are not so she gets it straight from Thailand. Good thing they were selling those ingredients.

I got what I could buy from her, and bought the rest from the Supermarket.

L-R: Kaffir Lime Leaves, Thai Patis, Shrimp Paste, Galangal (Thai Ginger) and Tamarind Paste. Not in picture are Green Curry Paste and Chili Paste.

And then, last Sunday, I cooked Pad Thai so the husbo can taste it. Here's the output:

Not very happy with the result because I put in too much oil and the tofu was a bit overdone. Perhaps in my next try, I can perfect it.

Read from Chuvaness about 25 Mushrooms and now I'm itching to enroll! One class that I super want to enroll in is the Thai class. You see, the past few days, the husband has been going crazy over Thai food.

These classes are a steal for P1,100 per session! The only downside is that classes happen on weekdays so I will have to take a leave, which I don't mind at all. I can get a few days off from work if I have to. But lemme think about it.

For the Thai Class, the recipes are: Pomelo salad, Tom Yum soup, bagoong rice, steamed fish with coriander, chili, garlic, phad Thai, green chicken curry, sticky rice with mangoPlus: Recycling basics, kitchen hygiene and personal hygiene.