I’ve enjoyed my foray in to cooking over the last few months. I have found it to be a nice change from my day job of software development; very relaxing, except for that hectic part at the end when you are trying to get a number of dishes, all with different cooking times, on to the plate at the same time.

To encourage me in my endeavour the Boss brought me a number of cooking books, mostly Asian/Chinese due to my liking of the wok and our liking of that cuisine. I returned the gesture by buying her an electric wok and a new set of cooking utensils. The idea was that using two woks would make it easier to get different dishes on the table at the same time.

Now the purists out there will probably tell you that woks should be used on a gas ring but we don’t have one of them. I can tell you that they work pretty well on our induction hob and the electric one is really good too for a £33 bit of kit – the heat control is very good.

It happens that one of the cookbooks Mary gave me contains a recipe for Nasi Goreng. This is an Indonesian style fried rice dish that I first tasted when I was out in the far east back in the 1960’s and really liked, so I christened the electric wok with it. Nasi Goreng can be a little pale on the eye in it’s basic form and I like a little colour on the plate, so I threw some peas and diced carrot in with the rice and chicken recipe to brighten it up. Boy did that bring back some memories – and it tasted good enough for Mary to clear her plate.

Needless to say this week has been an Asian cuisine experience.

Next week it will be back to a varied diet starting with a couple of Italian style dishes on Saturday.

Stay Safe folks