On your own…

I used to hang out with some Malay friends in the mid-70s in Kuching and I learnt how to cook this corned beef-potato soup from one of them…

You just open a can of corned beef, peel and cut some potatoes into thin strips, slice one Bombay onion and throw everything into a pot and bring it to boil. Add half a teaspoon of msg…and that’s it!

It would be nicer if you simmer it a little longer until the soup is slightly thicker from the potatoes and the flavour of the corned beef has gone into it. Be forewarned, however, that though you may have a very tasty soup to savour, the boiling would have rendered the corned beef quite bland and tasteless. So if you love corned beef for its taste, perhaps you should just stick to frying it…

Another very easy thing to cook is this pork dish. My mother used to cook it and simple though it may be, we all loved it a lot. You can imagine me stealing a slice again and again in between meals and when it was time for dinner, most of it would have disappeared! LOL!!!

To cook it, you just boil a slab of pork in water (enough to cover the meat) and simmer until you get a rich stock (you would probably half of the original amount left). Pour the stock into another saucepan…and add one teaspoon of salt and half a teaspoon of msg to the pork. Cover the pot and shake vigorously. Let it stand for sometime before cutting and serving…

You can use the stock to cook any soup you like but the easiest would be to dilute it with water and bring it back to boil. Add salt and msg according to taste…and sprinkle some fried onions or chopped spring onions and serve. You will get a delicious plain soup that is a lot nicer than the ones they give you when you go and eat your kampua noodles.

So there you have it, folks – two very simple recipes that you can try on your own. It’s really so very easy…..