I didn’t know how to cook when I got married. As they say, I could only boil water and that’s it. We had a restaurant in the Philippines and with cooks in the family, I wasn’t expected to do anything.
My husband knew that I was an amateur when it comes to household chores. For the first weeks of our marriage life, he did everything until my conscience bugged me. He was bringing home the bacon and yet he had to mop the floors and cook at home too! I never expected to marry a foreigner and live in a foreign country. I always thought that I’d get a helper when I get married. Some things in life are totally unpredictable.
Like I said, my husband cooked during the early days of our marriage. We would often go out to eat too. I thought that time that we were spending unnecessarily and it would be more cost efficient to eat at home.
Learning how to prepare meals meant calling almost everyday to the Philippines. I frequently bugged my second sister, who’s a great cook, on how to do things. Then my mother sent me a few cookbooks, among them Nora Daza’s Galing-galing. The internet was helpful too. I’d browse through the recipes of Pinoycook and try them. I would do exactly as what’s written on the book and the internet. If they say 1 teaspoon, I’d really use just 1 teaspoon.
It took me a while to develop my cooking skills. When we spent a week’s vacation at my parents-in-law’s home in the province, my mother-in-law taught me several Korean dishes. She recalled the last time we met how I served them noodles for breakfast! She said she’s amazed at how I learned to cook Korean food properly. In fact, she would often request me to prepare dwenjang jjige (soybean stew) whenever they visit us.
This website - Apt 1014 - is all about a Filipino-Korean household. I thought it would be nice to share some of the recipes I’d learned through the years.
